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^lONABCr 
EROES 
INASIA 



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'j^2^M^.^.M^Myi. 



<AMAS OF Tl^y 







>>^Vj»a-: 



Missionary Heroes in Asia 




Dr. Chamberlain was quite unaware that a Huge Serpent 
was hanging over him 



Missionary Heroes 
in Asia 



TRUE STORIES OF THE INTREPID BRAVERY 

AND STIRRING ADVENTURES OF MISSIONARIES 

WITH UNCIVILIZED MAN, WILD BEASTS AND 

THE FORCES OF NATURE 



BY 



JOHN C. LAMBERT, M.A., D.D. 

author of 

"the omnipotent cross," "three fishing boats" 

&*c. b'c. 



WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

LONDON: SEELEY & CO. Limited 
1908 






oo 



7 



PREFATORY NOTE 

THE author desires with much gratitude to 
acknowledge his debt to the following 
ladies and gentlemen, who have most kindly- 
assisted him in gathering the materials for this 
book by giving their consent to his use of their 
writings, by lending him books and photo- 
graphs, or in other ways : — 

The Rev. George Robson, d.d.. Editor of 
the ^^ Missionary Record of the United Free 
Church of Scotland " ; the Rev. E. P. Cache- 
maille, m.a., and Captain E. Poulden, r.n. ; 
the Rev. J. W. Jack, m.a. ; the Rev. W. 
MacNaughtan, m.a. ; Miss M. G. Cowan, 
Hon. Librarian of the Missionary Library at 
Lady Stair's House, Edinburgh ; Mr. John 
Cochrane, of the Publications Office of the 
United Free Church. 

He would also express his obligations to the 
following missionary societies and firms of 

7 



Prefatory Note 

publishers, which have most courteously 
allowed him to make use of the books men- 
tioned in their proper places at the end of each 
chapter, and in some cases of illustrations of 
which they hold the copyright ; — 

The South American Society ; the Religious 
Tract Society ; The Clarendon Press ; Messrs. 
Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier ; The Fleming 
H. Revell Co.; Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton; 
Messrs. Morgan & Scott. 



INTRODUCTION 

IN a *^ foreword" which he contributes to 
Dr. Jacob Chamberlain's attractive mis- 
sionary book, In the Tiger Jungle^ Dr. Francis 
E. Clark expresses the opinion that one need 
not patronize sensational and unhealthy fiction 
to find stirring adventure and thrilling narrative, 
and then goes on to say : — 

** There is one source which furnishes stories 
of intense and dramatic interest, abounding in 
novel situations and spiced with abundant 
adventure ; and this source is at the same time 
the purest and most invigorating fountain at 
which our youth can drink. To change the 
figure, this is a mine hitherto largely unworked ; 
it contains rich nuggets of ore, which will well 
repay the prospector in this new field." 

The field to which Dr. Clark refers is the 
history of modern Christian missions. His 
meaning is that the adventurous and stirring 



Introduction 

side of missionary experience needs to be 
brought out, and emphasis laid upon the fact 
that the romantic days of missions are by no 
means past. 

There are stories which are now among the 
classics of missionary romance. Such are the 
expedition of Hans Egede to Greenland, the 
lonely journeys of David Brainerd among the 
Indian tribes of the North American forests, 
the voyage of John Williams from one coral 
island of the Pacific to another in the little ship 
which his own hands had built, the exploration 
of the Dark Continent by David Livingstone 
in the hope of emancipating the black man's 
soul. 

But among missionary lives which are more 
recent or less known, there are many not less 
noble or less thrilling than those just referred 
to ; and the chapters which follow are an 
attempt to make this plain. 

There is, of course, a deeper side to Christian 
missions — a side that is essential and invariable 
— while the elements of adventure and romance 
are accidental and occasional. If in these 
pages the spiritual aspects of foreign mission 



Introduction 

work are but slightly touched upon, it is not 
because they are either forgotten or ignored, 
but simply because it was not part of the 
writer's present plan to deal with them. It is 
hoped, nevertheless, that some of those into 
whose hands this book may come will be 
induced by what they read to make fuller 
acquaintance with the lives and aims of our 
missionary heroes, and so will catch something 
of that spirit which led them to face innumer- 
able dangers, toils, and trials among heathen 
and often savage peoples, whether in the frozen 
North or the burning South, whether in the 
hidden depths of some vast continent or among 
the scattered ^* islands of the ocean seas." 

In the recently published Memoirs of 
Archbishop Temple we find the future Primate 
of the Church of England, when a youth of 
twenty, writing to tell his mother how his 
imagination had been stirred by the sight of 
Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand starting for the 
Pacific with a band of young men who had 
devoted themselves to the propagation of the 
Gospel among a benighted and barbarous 
people. ** It is not mere momentary enthu- 



Introduction 

siasm with me," he writes; **my heart beats 
whenever I think of it. I think it one of the 
noblest things England has done for a long 
time ; almost the only thing really worthy of 
herself." 

It is the author's earnest desire that the 
narratives which follow may help to kindle in 
some minds an enthusiasm for missions like 
that which characterized Frederick Temple to 
the very end of his long and strenuous life ; or, 
better still, that they may even suggest to some 
who are looking forward to the future with a 
high ambition, and wondering how to make 
the most of life, whether there is any career 
which offers so many opportunities of romantic 
experience and heroic achievement as that of a 
Christian missionary. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE STEPPES AND DESERTS OF MONGOLIA 

PAGB 

James Gilmour — His bold plan — Mongolia — Across the plains — 
Boarding in a lama's tent — A Mongol menu — Scotch porridge — 
Learning to ride — Gilmour as pedlar and tramp — Wolves and 
bandits — The man in the iron cage— The wounded soldier and 
the living skeleton — Robinson Crusoe turned missionary . .17 

CHAPTER II 

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE TELUGUS 

Indian race-groups — The Dravidians — The land of the Telugus — 
Dr. Jacob Chamberlain — A primitive ambulance — *' The Divine 
Guru"— Under the " Council-tree "—The village Swami— A 
Mohammedan mob — Fight with a serpent — The *' serpent de- 
stroyer " and the village elders — Some tiger adventures — A flood 
on the Godavery . . . ... 43 

CHAPTER III 

A JAPANESE ROMANCE 

Romantic Japan — The daifnio and the stable-boy — Thirsting for 
truth — In a junk to Hakodate — A schooner and a stowaway 
— A discovery in Hong-Kong — Arrival in Boston — Mr. Hardy 
and **Joe" — At Amherst and Andover — The Mikado's em- 
bassy — Neesima's educational dreams — Return to Japan — The 
"Doshisha" — The wooden cross and the living monument . 69 

13 



Contents 

CHAPTER IV 

"from far FORMOSA" 

PAGE 

George Leslie Mackay — A lawless land — The Malay and the China- 
man — Dentistry and the Gospel — A cruel plot — The capture of 
Bang-kah — The barbarians of the plain — The Kap-tsu-lan fisher- 
men — The mountain head-hunters — A Christmas night in the 
head-hunter's house . . . • • • 93 

CHAPTER V 

A HEROINE OF TIBET 

Mysterious Lhasa — The lady who tried to lift the veil — In the 
Himalayas — On the Chino-Tibetan frontier — The caravan for 
Lhasa — Attacked by brigands — The kilted Goloks — Among 
perpetual snows — A Tibetan love story — Noga the traitor — The 
arrest — Return to China — In the Chumbi Valley . . • n? 

CHAPTER VI 

"the SAVIOUR OF LIAO-YANG " 

A medical missionary's power — The Boxer madness — The avenging 
Russians— Looting of Hai-cheng — The "Free Healing Hall" 
— In front of Liao-yang — " A fine thing done by a white man 
all alone" — "The Saviour of Liao-yang" — Russo-Japanese 
War — Battle of Liao-yang — A mission hospital in the hour of 
battle — Mr. Bennet Burleigh's testimony — A robber's point of 
view — Adventure with bandits . . . • • i39 



14 



IN THE STEPPES AND DESERTS 
OF MONGOLIA 



Missionary Heroes in Asia 



CHAPTER I 

IN THE STEPPES AND DESERTS 
OF MONGOLIA 

James Gilmour — His bold plan — Mongolia — Across the plains — 
Boarding- in a lama's tent — A Mongol menu — Scotch porridge — 
Learning to ride — Gilmour as pedlar and tramp — Wolves and 
bandits — The man in the iron cage — The wounded soldier and the 
living skeleton — Robinson Crusoe turned missionary. 

ABOUT the middle of the year 1870 there 
-^~T^ arrived in Peking a young Scotchman, 
James Gilmour by name, who had been sent 
out to China by the London Missionary 
Society to begin work in the capital. Within 
a few weeks of his arrival, there took place 
at Tientsin, the port of Peking, that fanatical 
outbreak known as the Tientsin massacre, 
in which a Roman Catholic convent was 

19 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

destroyed and thirteen French people murdered. 
A widespread panic at once took hold of the 
capital. The European community felt that 
they were living on the edge of a volcano, for 
no one knew but that this massacre might be 
the prelude to a general outburst of anti-foreign 
hatred such as was witnessed later in con- 
nexion with the Boxer movement. All around 
Gilmour his acquaintances were packing up 
their most precious belongings, and holding 
themselves in readiness for a hurried flight to 
the south. It was at this moment that the 
new-comer resolved on a bold and original 
move. Instead of fleeing to the south in 
search of safety, he would turn his face north- 
wards and see if no opening could be found for 
Christian work among the Mongols of the 
great Mongolian plains. He was utterly un- 
acquainted both with the country and the 
language, but he had long felt a deep and 
romantic interest in that vast, lonely plateau 
which lies between China proper and Siberia, 
and forms by far the largest dependency of the 
Chinese Empire. The suspension of work in 
Peking seemed to offer the very opportunity 

20 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

he wanted for pushing his way into Mongolia. 
And so as soon as the necessary preparations 
could be made, for Gilmour was never the man 
to let the grass grow beneath his feet, he left 
the capital behind with all its rumours and 
alarms. Before long the Great Wall was 
passed, which ever since the third century B.C. 
has defended China from Mongolia. And 
then, with two camels and a camel-cart, our 
intrepid traveller set his face towards the 
Desert of Gobi, which lies in the very heart of 
the Mongolian plain. 

Mongolia, the home of the Mongols, has 
been described as a rough parallelogram, 1800 
miles from east to west, and 1000 miles from 
north to south. It is a huge plateau lifted 
high above the sea, in part desert, in part a 
treeless expanse of grassy steppe, and in part 
covered by mountain ranges whose peaks rise 
up to the line of perpetual snow. The climate, 
hot and dry in summer and bitterly cold in 
winter, makes agriculture impossible except in 
some favoured spots, and so by the force of his 
circumstances the Mongol is a nomad, dwelling 
in a tent, and pasturing his flocks and herds 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

upon the grass of the steppe. For long 
centuries the people were a constant terror to 
the Chinese. Even the Great Wall proved 
an ineffectual barrier against them, and time 
and again they poured like a mighty flood over 
the rich lands of their peace-loving neighbours 
to the south. But about 500 years ago they 
were converted from their earlier Pagan faith 
to Buddhism in its corrupted form of Lamaism, 
and this change of faith has had a decidedly 
softening effect upon the national character. 
Much of this, no doubt, must be attributed to 
the custom which prevails among them of 
devoting one or more sons in every family to 
the priesthood. One result of this custom is, 
that the Mongol priests, or lamas as they are 
called, actually form the majority of the male 
population, and as the lamas are celibates in 
virtue of their office, another result has been a 
great reduction in the population, as compared 
with early days. It is calculated that at the 
present time there are not more than two 
millions of Mongols occupying this vast 
territory of 1,300,000 square miles. Mongolia 
is no longer entitled now to the name it once 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

received of officina gentium, ** the manufactory 
of nations." It does not now possess those 
surplus swarms of bold and warlike horsemen 
which it once sent out to overrun and conquer 
other lands. But, like all nomads, its people 
are still an active and hardy race. As horse- 
men, too, they still excel. From their very 
infancy both men and women are accustomed to 
the saddle, and even yet some of them could 
rival the feats of the horsemen of Ghengis 
Khan, the greatest of all the Mongol con- 
querors of long ago. It was to this country 
and this interesting, but little known, people 
that James Gilmour devoted his life. 

His first journey across the great plateau 
began at Kalgan, which lies to the north-west 
of Peking, just within the Great Wall, and 
terminated at Kiachta on the southern frontier 
of Siberia. He made his journey over plain 
and desert, which occupied only a month, in 
the company of a Russian official who knew 
no English, while he himself knew neither 
Russian nor Mongolian. He was glad, there- 
fore, on reaching Kiachta to meet a fellow- 
countryman, one of the world's ubiquitou 

23 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

Scots, in the person of a trader named Grant. 
Grant was exceedingly kind to him, and took 
him into his own comfortable house. But 
finding that this contact with civilization 
was hindering him in his strenuous efforts to 
master the Mongolian language without delay, 
Gilmour formed a characteristic resolution. 
This was nothing else than to go out upon the 
plain and try to persuade some Mongolian to 
receive him as an inmate of his tent. 

It was at night that this idea occurred to 
him, and the next morning he left Kiachta, 
taking nothing with him but his **Penang 
lawyer." This, it should be explained, is 
a heavy walking-stick, so called because in 
Penang it is supposed to be useful in settling 
disputes. Gilmour had already discovered 
that in Mongolia it was not only useful, but 
altogether indispensable, as a protection against 
the ferocious assaults of the wolfish-looking 
dogs which invariably rush at a traveller if he 
draws near to any encampment. One of the 
first incidents of the caravan journey from 
Kalgan had been the narrow escape of a 
Russian soldier from being torn down by a 

24 




In a Mongol Encampment 



Mr. Gllmour always dressed in Chinese clothes, and when on tour generally had a post- 
man's bag strapped over one shoulder and a waterproof fishing-bag over the other, these 
two containing all his baggage. 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

pack of Mongolian dogs. With a stout 'Mimb 
of the law " in his fist, however, Gilmour feared 
nothing, but strode cheerfully over the plain, 
making for the first tent he saw on the horizon. 
As he drew near he heard the sound of a 
monotonous voice engaged in some kind of 
chant, and when he entered found a lama at 
his prayers. The lama, hearing footsteps, 
looked round and pronounced the one word, 
**Sit!" and then continued his devotions. 
For another quarter of an hour he went on, 
taking no further notice of his visitor mean- 
while. But suddenly his droning chant ceased, 
and he came forward and gave Gilmour a 
hospitable welcome. Gilmour opened his mind 
to him without delay, telling him that it was 
his desire to spend the winter in his tent and 
learn Mongolian from his instruction. The 
lama was surprised, but perfectly willing, and 
agreed to receive his visitor as a paying guest 
for an indefinite period at the modest rate of 
about a shilling a day. And so within a few 
months of his departure from London we find 
Gilmour living the life of a nomad in the tent 
of a lama on the Mongolian plain. 

25 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

Once the first novelty had worn off, he 
found the life somewhat monotonous. Dinner 
was the great event of the day, the more so as 
it is the only meal in which a Mongol indulges. 
The preparations for this repast were unvary- 
ing, as also was the subsequent menu. To- 
wards sunset the lama's servant, who was 
himself a lama, melted a block of ice in a 
huge pot, over a fire which filled the tent with 
smoke. Taking a hatchet, he next hewed a 
solid lump of mutton from a frozen carcase and 
put it into the water. As soon as it was boiled, 
he fished it out with the fire-tongs and laid it 
on a board before his master and Gilmour, who 
then attacked it with fingers and knives. Forks 
were things unknown. When a Mongol eats 
he takes a piece of meat in his left hand, 
seizes it with his teeth, and then cuts off his 
mouthful close to his lips by a quick upward 
movement of his knife. The operation looks 
dangerous, but the flatness of the native nose 
makes it safe enough, though it would be very 
risky in the case of one who was otherwise 
endowed. The Mongols always thought Gil- 
mour's nose tremendous, and they excused him 

26 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

for cutting off his mouthfuls first and appropri- 
ating them afterwards. 

Meanwhile, as this first course was in pro- 
gress, the servant had thrown some millet into 
the water used for boiling the meat, and when 
the diners had partaken sufficiently of the 
fare, this thin gruel was served up as a kind of 
soup. The mutton, Gilmour says, was tough; 
but he declares that seldom in his life did he 
taste any preparation of civilized cookery so 
delicious as this millet-soup. He admits that 
he has no doubt that it was chiefly desert- 
hunger that made it seem so good. 

Though he ate only once a day, the lama, 
like all Mongols, consumed vast quantities of 
tea. At dawn, and again at noon, the servant 
prepared a pailful of the cheering beverage, 
giving it always ten or fifteen minutes' hard boil- 
ing, and seasoning it with fat and a little meal 
instead of milk. Gilmour accommodated him- 
self to the ways of the tent. As a concession 
to his Scotch tastes, however, he was provided 
every morning with a cupful of meal made into 
something like porridge by the addition of boil- 
ing water. This the lama and his servant called 

27 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

^* Scotland," and they were careful to set it aside 
regularly for the use of *^ Our Gilmour," to 
whom, Buddhist priests though they were, they 
soon became quite attached. 

Before leaving the subject of meals, we may 
mention that on the last day of the year 
Mongols make up for their abstemiousness 
during the other 364 by taking no fewer than 
seven dinners. When New Year's Eve arrived, 
the lama insisted that his visitor should do his 
duty like a Mongolian, and a yellow-coated old 
lama, who was present as a guest on the occa- 
sion, was told off to keep count of his progress. 
Gilmour managed to put down three dinners, 
and was just wondering what to do next when 
he discovered that his guardian lama had got 
drunk and lost count. In this case, although 
himself a strict teetotaller, he did not feel dis- 
posed to take too severe a view of the old 
gentleman's failing. 

When the time came at last to recross the 
plains, Gilmour decided to make the homeward 
journey on horseback instead of by camel-cart. 
The one drawback was that he had never yet 
learned to ride. But as he had found that the 

28 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

best way to learn Mongolian was by being 
compelled to speak it, he considered that a 
ride of a good many hundred miles might be 
the best way of learning to sit on a horse. The 
plan proved a decided success. In Mongolia 
a man who cannot ride is looked upon as a 
curiosity, and when Gilmour first mounted 
everybody turned out to enjoy the sight of his 
awkwardness. But though he had one or two 
nasty falls through his horse stumbling into 
holes on treacherous bits of ground, such as 
are very frequent on the plains, where the rats 
have excavated galleries underground, he soon 
learned to be quite at home on the back of his 
steed. When he rode at last once more through 
a gateway of the Great Wall, passing thus out 
of Mongolia into China again, he felt that 
after the training he had received on his way 
across the steppes and the desert, he would be 
ready henceforth to take to the saddle in any 
circumstances. Indeed, so sure of his seat had 
he become that we find him on a subsequent 
occasion, when he formed one of a company 
mounted for a journey on Chinese mules, which 
will not travel except in single file, riding with 

29 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

his face to the tail of his beast, so as to be 
better able to engage in conversation with the 
cavalier who came behind him. 

This crossing and recrossing of the Mongolian 
plain, and especially the winter he had spent 
in the lama's tent, had already given Gilmour 
a knowledge of the Mongolian language, and 
a familiarity with the habits and thoughts 
of the Mongols themselves, such as hardly any 
other Western could pretend to. Peking, when 
he returned to it, had settled down to something 
like its normal quiet, but he felt that the 
ordinary routine of work in the city was not the 
work to which he was specially called. The 
desert air was in his blood now, and Mongolia 
was calling. Henceforth it was for the Mongols 
that he lived. 

Year by year Gilmour fared forth into the 
Great Plain in prosecution of his chosen task. 
And although it was his custom to return to 
Peking for the winter, he still continued while 
there to devote himself to his Mongol flock. 
Between China and Mongolia a considerable 
trade is carried on, the Mongols bringing in 
hides, cheese, butter, and the other products of 

30 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

a pastoral territory, and carrying away in 
return vast quantities of cheap tea in the form 
of compressed bricks, these bricks being used 
in Gilmour's time not only for the preparation 
of the favourite beverage, but as a means of 
exchange in lieu of money. During the 
winter months large numbers of traders arrive 
in Peking from all parts of Mongolia, and 
many of them camp out in their tents in open 
spaces, just as they do when living on the 
plains. Gilmour frequented these encamp- 
ments, and took every opportunity he could 
make or find of conversing about religious 
matters, and especially of seeking to commend 
*^the Jesus-doctrine," as the Buddhists called 
it. One plan that he followed was to go about 
like a Chinese pedlar, with two bags of books 
in the Mongolian language hanging from his 
shoulders. All were invited to buy, and in 
many cases this literature was taken up quite 
eagerly. Often a would-be purchaser de- 
manded to have a book read aloud to him 
before he made up his mind about it, and this 
gave the pedlar a welcome chance of reading 
from the Gospels to the crowd which gathered, 

31 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

and then of introducing a conversation, which 
sometimes passed into a discussion, about the 
merits of Jesus and Buddha. Sometimes those 
who were anxious to buy had no money, but 
were prepared to pay in kind. And so, not 
infrequently, Gilmour was to be seen at night 
making his way back to his lodgings in the city 
**with a miscellaneous collection of cheese, sour- 
curd, butter, millet-cake, and sheep's fat, repre- 
senting the produce of part of the day's sales." 

Among the most remarkable of Gilmour's 
many journeys through Mongolia was one 
which he made in 1884, and made entirely on 
foot. He was a tremendous walker at times, 
more perhaps by reason of his unusual will 
power than because of exceptional physical 
strength, and is known to have covered 300 
miles in seven and a half days — an average of 
forty miles a day. On the occasion of his long 
tramp over the plains and back, he had special 
reasons for adopting that method of locomo- 
tion. 

One was that grass was so scarce during 
that year that it would hardly have been 
possible to get pasture for a camel or a horse. 

32 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

Another was that the love of simplicity and 
unconventionality, which was so marked a 
feature of his character, grew stronger and 
stronger, and also the desire to get as near as 
possible to the poorest and humblest of the 
people. At a later period we find him adopt- 
ing in its entirety ^^not only the native dress, 
but practically the native food, and so far as a 
Christian man could, native habits of life." 
An idea of the length to which he carried the 
rule of plain living may be gathered from the 
fact that for some time his rate of expenditure 
was only threepence a day. His biographer, 
Mr. Lovett, gives us a graphic picture of him 
taking his bowl of porridge, native fashion, in 
the street, sitting down upon a low stool beside 
the boiler of the itinerant vendor from whom 
he had just purchased it. And the plainness 
of his garb at times may be judged of when 
we mention that in one village on the borders 
of China he was turned out of the two respect- 
able inns which the place could boast, on the 
ground that he was a foot-traveller without 
cart or animal, who must be content to betake 
himself to the tavern for tramps, 
c 33 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

It was in keeping with his tastes, therefore, 
as well as from necessity, that he once tramped 
through MongoHa with all his belongings on 
his back. His equipment when he set out 
consisted of a postman's brown bag on one 
side, containing his kit and provisions ; on the 
other an angler's waterproof bag with books, 
etc. ; together with a Chinaman's sheepskin 
coat slung over his shoulder by means of a 
rough stick of the ^^Penang lawyer" type. 
In the course of this tramp, his formidable 
stick notwithstanding, he had sometimes to be 
rescued from the teeth of the dogs which flew, 
not unnaturally, at a character so suspicious- 
looking. But he met with much hospitality 
from the people, both lamas and laymen, 
wherever he went ; and returned to Kalgan 
without any serious mishap. From two dan- 
gers of the country he altogether escaped. 
One was the risk of being attacked by wolves, 
which are a perfect terror to the Chinese tra- 
veller over the plains, though the inhabitants 
themselves make light of them, and never 
hesitate when they catch sight of one to be- 
come the attacking party. The result of this 

34 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

is that a wolf is said to distinguish from afar 
between a Mongol and a Chinaman, slinking 
off as hastily as possible if it sees a wayfarer 
approaching in long skin robes, but anticipat- 
ing a good dinner at the sight of another in 
blue jacket and trousers. Gilmour himself 
was of opinion that Mongolian wolves are not 
so dangerous as Siberian ones. The reason 
he gives is that, unlike the Russians, the 
Mongols keep such poor sheep-folds that a 
wolf can help itself to a sheep whenever it 
likes, and so is seldom driven by hunger to 
attack a man. The other danger was from 
bandits. For there are parts of the Desert of 
Gobi, crossed as it is by the great trade routes 
between Siberia and China, which are quite as 
unpleasant to traverse as the ancient road be- 
tween Jerusalem and Jericho. But Gilmour 
was probably never more secure against high- 
way robbery than when he walked through 
Mongolia as a missionary tramp. 

It is impossible to enter into the details of 
the strange and romantic experiences which 
befell this adventurous spirit in the course of 
his many wanderings. Now we find him 

35 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

spending the night in a lama's tent, most prob- 
ably discussing sacred things with his host till 
far on towards morning over a glowing fire of 
argol^ or dried cow's dung, the customary fuel 
of the plains. At another time he is careering 
across the desert on horseback as swiftly as his 
Mongol companions, for he was a man who 
never liked to be beaten. Now he is at a 
marriage feast, looking on with observant and 
humorous eyes at the rough but harmless 
merry-makings. Again, he is in a court of 
justice, where punishment is meted out on the 
spot upon the culprit's back, in the presence of 
a highly appreciative crowd. At one time, 
with a heart full of pity for a superstitious and 
deluded people, he is watching a Buddhist 
turning his praying-wheel with his own hand 
or hanging it up in front of his tent to be 
turned for him by the wind. At another, as 
he passes a criminal in an iron cage who is 
condemned to be starved to death, and is set 
day by day in front of an eating-house in a 
large trading settlement for the aggravation of 
his tortures, he is reflecting on the defects of a 
religion that can permit its followers to enjoy 

36 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

this public exhibition of a fellow-creature's dying 
pains. In his journeys he was constantly ex- 
posed to the bitter cold of a land where the 
thermometer falls in winter to thirty or forty 
degrees below zero, and all through the heat of 
summer huge lumps of ice remain unmelted in 
the wells. Often he had to endure long spells 
of hunger and thirst when on the march. 
Worst of all, he had to share the filth and 
vermin of a Mongol tent as well as its hospi- 
tality. But these things he looked upon as 
all *4n the day's work" ; and though he may 
sometimes chronicle them in his diary as facts, 
he never makes them matter of complaint. 

Among the most interesting incidents which 
he records are some in connexion with his en- 
deavours to bring relief to those whom he 
found in sickness and pain. Although not a 
doctor by profession, he had picked up some 
medical and surgical skill, and did not hesitate 
to use it on behalf of those for whom no better 
skill was available. In doing this he some- 
times ran great risks, for with all their 
hospitality the Mongols are terribly sus- 
picious, and ready to entertain the most 

37 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

extraordinary rumours about the designs of 
any stranger. 

Once he persuaded a blind man to come with 
him to Peking, to have his eyes operated on 
for cataract in the hospital there. The opera- 
tion was unsuccessful, and the story was spread 
over a large region that Gilmour enticed people 
to Peking in order to steal ^* the jewels of their 
eyes " that he might preserve them in a bottle 
and sell them for hundreds of taels. In conse- 
quence of this he lived for months under what 
almost amounted to sentence of death. Only 
by showing no consciousness of fear and by 
patiently living suspicion down, did he escape 
from being murdered. 

Once he had undertaken to treat a soldier 
for a bullet wound received in an encounter 
with brigands, thinking that it was only a 
flesh wound he had to deal with. It turned out 
to be a difficult bone complication. Now Gil- 
mour knew hardly anything of anatomy, and 
he had absolutely no books to consult. ^*What 
could I do," he says, **but pray?" And a 
strange thing happened. There tottered up to 
him through the crowd a live skeleton— a man 

38 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

whose bones literally stood out as distinctly as 
if he were a specimen in an anatomical museum, 
with only a yellow skin drawn loosely over 
them. The man came to beg for cough medi- 
cine, but Gilmour was soon busy fingering a 
particular part of his skeleton, with so strange 
a smile on his face that he heard a bystander 
remark, *^ That smile means something." **So 
it did, " Gilmour adds. * 4t meant among other 
things that I knew what to do with the wounded 
soldier's damaged bone ; and in a short time 
his wound was in a fair way of healing." 

James Gilmour's Among the Mongols is a 
book to be read, not only for the romance of 
its subject-matter, but because of the author's 
remarkable gift of realistic statement — his power 
of making his readers see things in bodily 
presence just as his own eyes had seen them. 
In more ways than one he reminds us of Borrow, 
but especially in what Borrow himself described 
as ^^the art of telling a plain story." On the 
first appearance of Among the Mongols a very 
competent reviewer in the Spectator traced a 
striking resemblance in Gilmour to a still greater 
writer of English than the author of Lavengro 

39 



The Deserts of Mongolia 

and The Bible in Spain, ^^ Robinson Crusoe," 
he said, '^ has turned missionary, lived years in 
Mongolia, and written a book about it. That 
is this book." It was high praise, but it con- 
tained no small degree of truth. And to the 
advantage of Gilmour's book as compared with 
Defoe's, it must be remembered that every- 
thing that the former tells us is literally true. 



Authorities. — Among the Mongols^ by the Rev. James Gilmour, 
M.A., and James Gilmour of Mongolia^ by Richard Lovett, M.A. 
(Religious Ti-act Society) ; The Far East, by Archibald Little (The 
Clarendon Press). 



40 



IN THE COUNTRY OF THE 
TELUGUS 



CHAPTER II 

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE 
TELUGUS 

Indian race-groups — The Dravidians — The land of the Telugus — 
Dr. Jacob Chamberlain— 'A primitive ambulance — " The Divine 
Guru"— Under the "Council-tree" — the village Swami — A Mo- 
hammedan mob — Fight with a serpent — The "serpent destroyer" 
and the village elders — Some tiger adventures — A flood on the 
Godavery, 

APART from the Tibeto-Burman tribes scat- 
/ 1. tered along the skirts of the Himalayas, 
the peoples of India are commonly divided by 
ethnologists into three great race-groups — the 
aborigines (often called the Kolarians), the 
Dravidians, and the Aryans. The aborigines 
are now found chiefly in the jungles and moun- 
tains of the Central Provinces, into which they 
were driven at a very early period by the 
Dravidians, the first invaders of India. Mr. 
Kipling, who has done so much to make India 

43 



The Country of the Telugus 

more intelligible to the English, has not for- 
gotten to give us pictures of the aboriginal 
peoples. Those who are familiar with his 
fascinating Jungle Books will remember the 
story of ^^The King's Ankus," and the weird 
figure of the little Gond hunter who shot the 
villager with his feathered arrow for the sake of 
the jewelled ankus, and afterwards was found 
by Mowgli and Bagheera lying in the forest 
beaten to death with bamboo rods by a band 
of thieves who lusted after the same fatal 
prize. 

In ''The Tomb of his Ancestors," again, 
we have a vivid sketch of the mountain Bhils, 
whose combination of superstition, courage, 
and loyalty reminds us of the Scottish High- 
landers in the days of Prince Charlie. These 
aborigines of the hills were long neglected by 
the Church, but much is now being done on 
their behalf. Dr. Shepherd, for example, a 
Scotch medical missionary, has carried both the 
Gospel and the healing powers of modern 
science into the wild country of the Bhils of 
Rajputana, and can tell tales of his experiences 
among them as striking and thrilling as any 

44 



The Country of the Telugus 

that have come from the pen of Rudyard 
KipHng. 

The Dravidians, who first overran India and 
drove the earlier inhabitants into the hills, were 
afterwards themselves supplanted to a large 
extent by the more powerful Aryans. These 
Aryans were members of that same original 
stock to which the nations of Europe trace 
their origin, for while one section of the race 
moved southwards upon India through the 
Himalayas from the great plains of Central 
Asia, another flowed to the west and took pos- 
session of Europe. By the Aryan invasion of 
India the Dravidians were pushed for the most 
part into the southern portion of the vast penin- 
sula, where they have formed ever since a 
numerous and powerful group. Five Dra- 
vidian peoples are usually distinguished, the 
Tamils and the Telugus being the most im- 
portant of the five. It is of work among the 
Telugus that we are to speak in the present 
chapter. 

The country of the Telugus stretches north- 
wards from Madras for some five hundred miles 
along the shores of the Bay of Bengal, while 

45 



The Country of the Telugus 

to the west it extends about half-way across 
the peninsula, and so includes large parts not 
only of the Presidency of Madras, but of the 
kingdom of Mysore and the dominions of the 
Nizam of Hyderabad. It is a region which 
attracts those who go to India for sport and 
adventure, for its jungles still abound in tigers 
and other wild animals. From the point of 
view of Christian missions it has this special 
interest, that there is no part of all Hindustan 
where the Gospel has been preached with more 
marked success, or where the people have 
been gathered more rapidly into the Christian 
Church. 

One of the most enterprising of modern 
Indian missionaries is Dr. Jacob Chamber- 
lain, of the American Reformed Church, 
who began his labours as a medical evan- 
gelist to the Telugus more than forty years 
ago. He is the author of two books. The 
Cobra^s Den and In the Tiger Jungle ^ which 
give graphic sketches of his experiences in city 
and village and jungle, on horseback and in 
bullock-cart, in the surgery with operating 
knife in hand, and at the busy fair when a 

46 



The Country of the Telugus 

crowd has gathered round and the knife that 
cures the body has been exchanged for the 
Book that saves the soul. Taking these two 
deHghtful volumes as our authorities, we 
shall first glance at Dr. Chamberlain in the 
midst of his medical and surgical work, 
and see how effective such work becomes 
in opening the way for Christian teaching. 
Then we shall follow him on one of his 
longer evangelistic tours through the Telugu 
country. 

All morning, ever since sunrise, the doctor 
has been busy with the patients who have come 
from far and near to be treated or prescribed 
for, until about a hundred persons are gathered 
in front of the little dispensary. The heat of 
the day is now coming on, but before dismiss- 
ing them and distributing the medicines they 
have waited for, he takes down his Telugu 
Bible, reads and explains a chapter, and then 
kneels to ask a blessing upon all who have 
need of healing. 

It is now breakfast-time, and after several 
hours of hard work the doctor is quite ready 
for a good meal. But just as he is about to 

47 



The Country of the Telugus 

go home for the purpose, he hears the famiUar 
chant used by the natives when carrying a 
heavy burden, and looking out sees four men 
approaching, two in front and two behind, 
with a long bamboo pole on their shoulders, 
and a blanket slung on it in hammock fashion 
with a sick man inside. Behind this primitive 
ambulance two men are walking, one leading 
the other by the hand. 

In a few minutes the sick man is laid in his 
blanket on the floor of the verandah, and the 
little company have told their tale. They have 
come from a village two days' journey off. 
They have heard of the foreign doctor that he 
can work wonderful cures. The young man 
in the blanket is dying ; the old man led by 
the hand is his uncle, who has recently grown 
blind. Their friends have brought them to 
the Doctor Padre to see if he can make them 
well. 

On examination Dr. Chamberlain finds that 
the young man's case is almost hopeless, but 
that there is just a chance of saving him by a 
serious surgical operation — and this he per- 
forms the same afternoon. At first the patient 

48 



The Country of the Telugus 

seems to be sinking under the shock, but he 
rallies by and by, and gradually comes back to 
health and strength again. The old man's 
blindness is a simpler case. An easy operation 
and careful treatment are all that are required. 
And so when uncle and nephew have been in 
the hospital for a few weeks, the doctor is 
able to send them back to their village — the 
young man walking on his own feet, and the 
old man no longer needing to be led by the 
hand. 

But here the story does not end. Every day 
while in hospital the two patients had heard 
the doctor read a chapter from the Gospel and 
make its meaning plain. And when the time 
for leaving came they begged for a copy of the 
history of Yesu Kristu, ^*the Divine Guru," so 
that they might let all their neighbours know 
of the glad news they had heard. They 
acknowledged that they could not read, for 
they were poor weavers who had never been 
to school. **But when the cloth merchant 
comes to buy our webs," they said, ^*we will 
gather the villagers, and put the book into his 
hand, and say, * Read us this book, and then 

D 49 



The Country of the Telugus 

v^e will talk business.' And when the tax- 
gatherer comes we will say, ' Read us this 
book, and then we will settle our taxes.' Let 
us have the book therefore, for we want all our 
village to know about the Divine Guru, Yesu 
Kristu." 

They got the book and went away, and for 
three years Dr. Chamberlain heard nothing of 
them. But at last on a wide preaching tour he 
met them again. They had learned of his 
approach, and when he entered the village at 
sunrise the whole population was gathered 
under the *^ Council- tree, " while his two 
patients of three years ago came forward with 
smiling faces to greet him, and told him that 
through the reading of the Gospel every one 
in the place had agreed to give up his idols if 
the Doctor Padre would send some one to 
teach them more about Jesus. Dr. Chamber- 
lain discussed the matter fully with them, and 
when he saw that they were thoroughly in 
earnest, promised to send a teacher as soon as 
possible. But just before leaving to proceed 
on his journey he noticed, near at hand, the 
little village temple, with its stone idols stand- 

50 



The Country of the Telugus 

ing on their platform at the farther end of the 
shrine. 

** What are you going to do with these idols 
now ? " he said to the people. 

**The idols are nothing to us any longer," 
they replied; ^*we have renounced them 
all." 

*'But are you going to leave them standing 
there in the very heart of the village ? " 

** What would you have us do with them?" 
they asked. 

*^Well," said the doctor, wishing to test 
their sincerity, '^l would like to take one of 
them away with me." He knew the supersti- 
tious dread which even converted natives are 
apt to entertain for the idols of their fathers, 
and the unwillingness they usually have to lay 
violent hands on them. He did not expect 
anything more than that they might permit 
him to remove one of the images for himself. 
But at this point Ramudu, the old man whose 
sight had been restored, stepped forward and 
said, ** ril bring out the chief Swami for you"; 
and going into the shrine he shook the biggest 
idol from the plaster with which it was fastened 



The Country of the Telugus 

to the stone platform, and then handed it to 
the doctor, saying as he did so something Hke 
this :— 

**Well, old fellow, be off with you! We 
and our ancestors for a thousand years have 
feared and worshipped you. Now we have 
found a better God, and are done with you. 
Be off with you, and a good riddance to us. 
Jesus is now our God and Saviour." 

And so the ugly stone Swami that had 
lorded it so long over the consciences of 
these Telugu villagers was ^Methroned," as 
Dr. Chamberlain puts it, ^^by the surgeon's 
knife," and passed in due course to a mis- 
sionary museum in the United States. But 
Yesu Kristu, the Divine Guru, reigned in 
its stead. 

But now let us follow the doctor in some of 
the more striking episodes of one of his earliest 
tours. It was a journey of 1200 miles, through 
the native kingdom of Hyderabad and on into 
Central India — a region where at that time no 
missionary had ever worked before. He rode 
all the way on a sturdy native pony, but was 
accompanied by four Indian assistants, with 

52 



The Country of the Telugus 

two bullock-carts full of Gospels and other 
Christian literature which he hoped to sell to 
the people at low prices. 

One of their first and most dangerous adven- 
tures was in a walled city of Hyderabad. 
They had already disposed of a few Gospels 
and tracts when some Brahman priests and 
Mohammedan fanatics raised the mob against 
them. It was done in this way. A number 
of the Gospels were bound in cloth boards of a 
buff colour. The Mohammedan zealots spread 
a rumour that these books were bound in pig- 
skin — a thing which no true disciple of 
Mahomet will touch. The Brahmans, on the 
other hand, told their followers that these 
yellow boards were made of calf-skin — and to 
a Hindu the cow is a sacred animal. The 
crowd got thoroughly excited, and soon Dr. 
Chamberlain and his four helpers were stand- 
ing in the market-place with their backs to a 
wall, while a how^ling multitude surged in 
front, many of whom had already begun to 
tear up the cobble-stones with which the street 
was paved in order to stone the intruders to 
death. The doctor saved the situation by 

53 



The Country of the Telugus 

getting permission to tell a wonderful story. 
Nothing catches an Indian crowd like the 
promise of a story. Their curiosity was 
aroused from the first, and soon their hearts 
were touched as they listened to a simple and 
graphic description of the death of Jesus on 
the cross. The stones dropped from the hands 
that clutched them, tears stood in many eyes, 
and when the speaker had finished every copy 
of the Gospels which had been brought into 
the city from the little camp without the walls 
was eagerly bought up by priests as well as 
people. 

But dangers of this sort were rare. For the 
most part, both in town and country, the white 
traveller was welcomed courteously, and gladly 
listened to as he stood in the busy market- 
place or sat beside the village elders on the 
stone seat beneath the ^^Council-tree," and 
explained the purpose of his coming. Dangers 
of another kind, however, were common 
enough, and Dr. Chamberlain tells of some 
narrow escapes from serpents, tigers, and the 
other perils of the Indian jungle. 

They were passing through the great teak 

54 



The Country of the Telugus 

forest, where the trees towered one hundred 
and fifty feet above their heads, when they 
came in sight one day of a large village in a 
forest clearing. As they drew near, the elders 
of the place came out to salute them. The 
doctor asked if they could give him a suitable 
place to pitch his tent, but they did better than 
that, for they gave him the free use of a newly 
erected shed. 

Somewhat tired out with a long forenoon's 
march, Dr. Chamberlain lay down to rest his 
limbs, and took up his Greek Testament mean- 
while to read a chapter, holding the book over 
his face as he lay stretched out on his back. 
By and by he let his arm fall, and suddenly 
became aware that a huge serpent was coiled 
on one of the bamboo rafters just above him, 
and that it had gradually been letting itself 
down until some four feet of its body were 
hanging directly over his head, while its tongue 
was already forked out — a sure sign that it was 
just about to strike. He says that when study- 
ing the anatomy of the human frame he had 
sometimes wondered whether a person lying 
on his back could jump sideways, without first 

55 



The Country of the Telugus 

erecting himself, and that he discovered on this 
occasion that, with a proper incentive, the 
thing could be done. 

Bounding from his dangerous position, he 
ran to the door of the shed and took from the 
bullock-cart which was standing there a huge 
iron spit five or six feet long, which was made 
for roasting meat in a jungle camp. With 
this as a spear he attacked the serpent, and 
w^as successful at his first thrust in pinning 
it to the rafter round which it was coiled. 
Holding the spit firmly in its place to prevent 
the struggling animal from shaking it out, 
though he ran the utmost risk of being struck 
as it shot out its fanged mouth in its efforts to 
reach his hand, he called loudly to his servant 
to bring him a bamboo cane. The cane was 
quickly brought, and then, still holding the 
spit in position with one hand, he beat the 
brute about the head till life was extinct. When 
quite sure that it was dead, he drew the spit 
out of the rafter and held it at arm's length on 
a level with his shoulder, the transfixed reptile 
hanging from it. He found that both the head 
and the tail touched the ground, thus showing 

56 



The Country of the Telugus 

that the serpent was not less than ten feet 
long. 

Just at that moment the village watchman 
looked in at the door, and then passed on 
quickly into the village. And immediately it 
flashed into the doctor's mind that he had 
got himself into trouble, for he knew that 
these people worship serpents as gods. They 
never dare to kill one, and if they see a 
stranger trying to do so, will intercede for 
its life. 

He was still considering what to do when he 
saw the chief men of the village advancing, 
and noticed, to his surprise, that they were 
carrying brass trays in their hands covered 
with sweetmeats, cocoanuts, and limes. His 
surprise was greater still when, as they reached 
the doorway in which he stood to meet them, 
they bowed down before him to the ground 
and presented their simple offerings, hailing 
him at the same time as the deliverer of their 
village. That deadly serpent, they told him, 
had been the terror of the place for several 
years. It had killed a child and several of 
their cattle, but they had never ventured to 

57 



The Country of the Tekigus 

attack it, for they knew that if any of them 
did so he would be accursed. The kindred of 
the dead serpent would wage war upon that 
man and his family, until every one of them 
was exterminated. But their visitor had killed 
it without their knowledge or consent, and so 
they were freed from the pest of their lives, 
and at the same time were absolutely guiltless 
of its blood. Their gratitude knew no bounds. 
They pressed upon the doctor the fattest sheep 
in their flocks. They sent the village crier 
with his tom-tom all round the place to 
summon the people to come and hear the 
words of ^Hhe serpent-destroyer." And when 
Dr. Chamberlain seized the opportunity to 
speak to them about ^*that old serpent called 
the devil," and One who came to bruise the 
serpent's head, they listened to him as he had 
rarely been listened to before. 

While serpents were, and still are, the most 
frequent danger of the traveller in the jungle, 
tigers were very numerous in the Telugu 
country forty years ago. Dr. Chamberlain 
has stories to tell both of the striped tiger, the 
royal tiger as it is commonly called, and the 

58 




Attacked by a Tiger, with no Weapon but an Umbrella 

Dr. Chamberlain came face to face with a spotted tiger in a lonely mountain path, he 
had no weapon, but emitting a Red Indian war-whoop and suddenly putting up his 
umbrella, he put the animal to flight. j f o y ' 9 



The Country of the Telugus 

smaller spotted variety, which is marked like a 
leopard, but has a tiger's claws and cannot 
climb trees as a leopard can. On one occasion, 
when all alone and unarmed, he met a spotted 
tiger face to face on a narrow mountain path, 
but succeeded in putting the beast to flight by 
suddenly opening his big white umbrella and 
letting out a Red Indian war-whoop which he 
had learned when a boy from a tribe of 
American Indians in Michigan. An experience 
with a tiger of the larger sort, however, 
though less dramatic, was probably a good 
deal more dangerous. 

It was about three weeks after their narrow 
escape from stoning in that walled city of 
Hyderabad, and they were still in the territories 
of the Nizam, but about one hundred miles 
farther north and in the midst of hill and jungle. 
The native assistants with the servants and 
bullock-carts had made an earlier start, and 
the doctor was riding on to overtake them 
when he noticed in the path, and side by 
side with the fresh cart tracks, the footprints 
of a huge tiger and its cub. He had been 
warned before plunging into the forest that 

59 



The Country of the Telugus 

seven people had recently been killed in this 
very neighbourhood by man-eating tigers ; and 
it seemed evident that this tiger was following 
the carts with murderous intent. It is not the 
way of a tiger to attack a group of travellers. 
It watches and waits until one of them falls 
behind or gets detached from the rest, and 
then it makes its spring. Dr. Chamberlain 
realized the situation at once. The little 
caravan was safe so long as all kept close 
together, but if any one lagged behind the 
others, or stopped to quench his thirst at the 
wayside stream, the tiger would be on him in 
a mom.ent. 

Pulling out a loaded fourteen-inch Navy 
revolver, the only weapon he carried with him 
in his expeditions through the jungle, and 
dashing his spurs into his pony, he galloped 
on through the forest to warn those ahead. 
As he flew onwards his eye was on the path, 
and always he saw the cart tracks and the foot- 
prints of the tiger side by side. A deadly fear 
took hold of him that he might be too late. 
But suddenly there came a turn in the road, 
and there, not far in front, were the two carts 

60 



The Country of the Telugus 

and their attendants moving slowly and peace- 
fully forward. And now the doctor noticed 
that the tiger tracks were gone. He had seen 
them last at the very corner round which the 
carts came into sight. Hearing the sharp 
tattoo of the pony's hoofs coming up behind, 
the tiger must have leaped into the bushes at 
that very point. Probably it was only a few 
feet from the horseman as he whisked past. But 
either his sudden appearance on his galloping 
steed gave it a fright, or else his motion was 
too rapid to offer the chance of a successful 
spring. 

Not the least of the difficulties of travel in 
the wild parts of India is caused by the tropical 
floods. On one occasion Dr. Chamberlain and 
his little band were swept bodily down a river, 
usually fordable, but swollen now by recent 
rains. For a moment or two the doctor and 
his pony were submerged, but ultimately the 
whole company managed to swim or scramble 
safely to the opposite bank. 

But it was a flood on the great Godavery 
river and its affluents that caused the worst 
predicament of all. By that time they had 

6i 



The Country of the Telugus 

reached the extreme point of the expedition, 
up among the mountain Gonds, and had 
turned to the south-east to make the return 
journey by a different route. At a certain 
point they found that the steamer on which 
they had counted had broken down in attempt- 
ing to stem the furious current, and that there 
was nothing for it but to march through 
seventy-five miles of a jungly, fever-haunted 
swamp in order to reach another steamer lower 
down. Bullock-carts were of no use, but by 
the aid of a hookmn or firman from the 
Nizam himself which the doctor had got hold 
of, he succeeded in obtaining a large body of 
bearers from a native deputy-governor. These 
men, however, though promised threefold 
wages, were most unwilling to accompany him, 
for with the country in flood the jungle be- 
comes a place of special dangers ; and it was 
only by much flourishing of the aforesaid 
Navy pistol, though without any intention 
of using it, that the doctor could make his 
men march at all or keep them from de- 
serting. 

But by and by an unforeseen trouble emerged. 
62 



The Country of the Telugus 

The constant dripping rain, the steamy heat, 
the jungle fever, the prowling tigers had all 
been taken into account. What had not been 
realized was the exceptional violence of the 
floods. And so one evening, when they came 
to a little tributary of the Godavery which must 
be crossed if they were to reach a place of 
safety for the night, they found that the back- 
water of the main stream, rushing up this 
channel, had made a passage absolutely im- 
possible. 

For a time they were almost at their wits' 
end, for it would have been almost as much as 
their lives were worth to spend the night in the 
midst of the swamp, and it was too late now 
to get back to the place from which they had 
started that morning. But guidance came in 
answer to prayer. Dr. Chamberlain tells us 
that all at once he seemed to hear a voice say- 
ing, ^^Turn to the left of the Godavery, and 
you will find rescue." And though the native 
guides assured him that to do so would only 
be a foolish waste of time and strength, as the 
Godavery was now a swirling flood three miles 
across, and no boat or raft could possibly be 

63 



The Country of the Telugus 

got within a distance of many miles^ he made 
his men turn sharp to the left and march 
in the direction of the Godavery bank. To 
his great delight, and to the astonishment 
of the natives, the first thing they saw as 
they emerged from the bushes was a large 
flat boat, just at their feet, fastened to a 
tree on the shore. 

The boatmen told them that early that morn- 
ing their cables had snapped, and they had 
been carried away by the flood from a mooring 
station higher upstream and on the British side 
of the river. To this precise spot they had 
been swept, they could not tell how. But to 
Dr. Chamberlain and his four native evange- 
lists it seemed clear that God had sent this 
boat expressly for their deliverance. They 
pitched their tent on the broad deck, and 
kindled a large fire on the shore to keep wild 
beasts away. And though the tigers scented 
them, and could be heard growling and snarl- 
ing in the bushes that fringed the bank, the 
night was passed in comparative comfort and 
safety. Next day they floated down the stream 
towards the steamer that was to carry them 

64 



The Country of the Telugus 

southwards. And so ended the more adven- 
turous part of this long missionary journey 
through the country of the Telugus. 



Note. — The material for this chapter is derived from Dr. 
Chamberlain's two books already referred to, The Cobra's Den and 
In the Tiger Jungle f both published by Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, 
and Ferrier. 



6S 



A JAPANESE ROMANCE 



CHAPTER III 
A JAPANESE ROMANCE 

Romantic Japan— The daimio and the stable-boy — Thirsting for truth 
— In a junk to Hakodate — A schooner and a stowaway — A dis- 
covery in Hong-Kong — Arrival in Boston — Mr. Hardy and "Joe" 
—At Amherst and Andover — The Mikado's embassy — Neesima's 
educational dreams— Return to Japan — The "Doshisha" — The 
wooden cross and the living monument. 

THERE is no country on the map of the 
world with which it is more natural to 
associate the idea of romance than the island 
empire of Japan. The sudden awaking of the 
people from their sleep of centuries, their tran- 
sition in the course of a single generation from 
something like European medievalism to the 
most up-to-date modernity, may fairly be de- 
scribed as one of the greatest wonders of 
history. Heroic as well as romantic, recall- 
ing twice over the immortal story of David 
and Goliath, are the two wars which the little 
Power has waged triumphantly in quick succes- 
sion against the biggest empires — first of Asia 

69 



A Japanese Romance 

and then of Europe. Romantic, too, as every 
traveller tells us, are the sights of the country 
and the ways of the people wherever Old Japan 
survives — the houses, the gardens, the elaborate 
courtesies, the artistic costumes, the combina- 
tion of a frank naturalism with an artificiality 
which has become a second nature. In read- 
ing about Japan we sometimes feel as if we 
had to do not with the world of sober realities, 
but with a fascinating chapter out of a new 
volume of Arabian Nights, And yet even in 
a land in which wonders meet us on every side, 
the strange story of Joseph Neesima deserves 
to be called romantic. 

He was born in 1843. It was ten years before 
that memorable Sabbath morning when Com- 
modore Perry, of the U.S. Navy, with his fleet 
of ^* barbarian" ships steamed into the harbour 
of Uraga, in the Bay of Yedo, and extorted 
from a reluctant Government those treaties of 
friendship and commerce which broke down for 
ever the walls of seclusion behind which Japan 
had hid herself from the eyes of the world. 
Neesima was a samurai^ a member of the old 
fighting caste of feudal times, and so even as 

70 




stereo Crpyri^ht Viidcrivocd ^ Underwood 



London and I\!eiu York 



Praying to Idols 



A Japanese peasant girl saying her prayers to the stone images of Amida. The load on her back 

is firewood. 



A Japanese Romance 

a boy wore a sword and was sworn to a life of 
fealty to the daimio or prince on whose estate 
he was born. 

From the first, however, it was evident that 
this little serf had a mind and will of his own, 
and also a passionate longing for truth and 
freedom. He devoted all his spare time to 
study, often sitting up over his books until the 
morning cocks began to crow. Once the prince, 
his master, caught him running away from his 
ordinary duties to go to the house of a teacher 
whom he was in the habit of visiting by stealth. 
After giving the boy a severe flogging, he asked 
him where he was going. Neesima's answer 
will best be given in his own words at a time 
when he had learned only enough English to 
write it in the ** pidgin " fashion. ** ^ Why you 
run out from here ? ' the daimio said. Then I 
answered him, * That I wish to learn foreign 
knowledge, because foreigners have got best 
knowledge, and I hope to understand very 
quickly.' Then he said, ^With what reason 
will you like foreign knowledge ? Perhaps it 
will mistake yourself.' I said to him sooner, 
*Why will it mistake myself? I guess every 



A Japanese Romance 

one must take some knowledge. If a man has 
not any knowledge, I will worth him as a dog 
or a pig.' Then he laughed, and said to me, 
* You are a stable-boy/ " 

Not less remarkable than this thirst for 
knowledge was the lad's consciousness of the 
rights of human beings, and passionate desire 
for fuller liberty : **A day my comrade sent me 
a Atlas of United States, which was written in 
Chinese letter by some American minister. I 
read it many times, and was wondered so much 
as my brain would melted out of my head, be- 
cause I liked it very much — picking one Presi- 
dent, building free schools, poor-houses, house 
of correction, and machine-working, and so 
forth, and thought that a government of every 
country must be as President of United States. 
And I murmured myself that, O governor of 
Japan ! why you keep down us, as a dog or a 
pig ? We are people of Japan ; if you govern 
us, you must love us as your children." 

But above all young Neesima felt a deep 
longing after God. When he was about fifteen 
years of age, to the great distress of his rela- 
tives, he refused to worship any longer the 

72 



A Japanese Romance 

family gods which stood on a shelf in the 
house. He saw for himself that they were ^ *only 
whittled things/' and that they never touched 
the food and drink which he offered to them. 
Not long after this he got possession of an 
abridged Bible history in the Chinese language, 
with which he was well acquainted, and was 
immensely struck by the opening sentence, **In 
the beginning God created the heaven and 
the earth." Immediately he recognized the 
Creator's claim to be worshipped. To this 
still Unknown God he began thereafter to pray, 
^* Oh, if You have eyes, look upon me ; if You 
have ears, listen for me." 

Before long it became Neesima's constant 
desire to find his way to the port of Hakodate, 
as an open port, where he thought he might 
fall in with some Englishman or American 
from whom to obtain the knowledge that he 
wanted. He made application to the daimio 
to be allowed to undertake the voyage, but got 
only a scolding and a beating for his pains. 
Yet he did not despair. In the quaint lan- 
guage of his earliest English style, ^^My 
stableness did not destroy by their expostula- 

73 



A Japanese Romance 

lations." He waited patiently for four or five 
years, and at last, to his inexpressible joy, 
secured permission to go to Hakodate in a 
sailing-junk which belonged to his master. 
The junk was a coaster, and it was several 
weeks before he reached the haven of his 
hopes. Getting to Hakodate at last, it seemed 
for a time as if nothing but disappoint- 
ment was in store for him there. He could 
find no one to teach him Etiglish, and mean- 
while his little stock of money melted rapidly 
away. At length matters began to look 
brighter. He fell in with a Russian priest 
who gave him some employment, and he made 
the acquaintance of a young Jap, Mr. Muno- 
kite, who was a clerk in an English store, and 
who not only taught him a little English, but 
helped to carry out a secret determination he 
had now formed of escaping to America at the 
earliest opportunity. 

He had not come to this decision without 
long and anxious thought. It involved great 
sacrifices and no small danger. In those days 
a Japanese subject was forbidden to leave the 
country on pain of death. If caught in the 

74 



A Japanese Romance 

act of attempting to do so, he forfeited his life ; 
while if he made good his escape, this meant 
that he had banished himself for ever from the 
** Land of the Rising Sun.*' 

It was painful for the youth to think of 
leaving his parents without even saying good- 
bye, and with no prospect of ever seeing them 
again, especially as he had been brought up 
under the influence of the Confucian doctrine 
of filial obedience. But he thought the matter 
out, and saw at last that in the search for truth 
and God it may be proper to set all other 
claims aside. ** I discovered for the first time," 
he wrote afterwards, *^that the doctrines of 
Confucius on the filial relations are narrow 
and fallacious. I felt that I must take my own 
course. I must serve my Heavenly Father 
more than my earthly parents." 

And Neesima loved his country as well as 
his home, for patriotism is a sentiment which 
glows with extraordinary warmth in every 
Japanese heart. Moreover, he was some- 
thing of a poet as well as a patriot, seeing 
his country in the glowing hues of a lively 
imagination. The verses he wrote far out on 

75 



A Japanese Romance 

the China Sea, after he had made good his 
flight, show how his heart kept turning back 
to the dear land of flowers. **If a man be 
determined in his mind to run away a thousand 
miles," one of his poems says, ^*he expects to 
have to endure great sufferings, and why can 
he be anxious about his home? But how 
strange ! In the night, when the spring wind 
is blowing, in a dream he sees flowers in the 
garden at home." 

But we are anticipating somewhat, for the 
story of Neesima's adventurous flight has 
yet to be told. After endless difficulties, his 
friend Munokite secured leave for him to 
work his passage to Shanghai on an American 
schooner, the Berlin^ Captain Savory. He had, 
of course, to smuggle himself on board at his 
own risk, and to do so with the full knowledge 
that if detected by the harbour police he would 
be handed over to the executioner without 
delay. His plans had accordingly to be laid 
with the utmost caution. When night fell, he 
had a secret meeting in a private house with 
Munokite and two other young friends. They 
supped together, and passed round the sake- 

76 



A Japanese Romance 

cup in token of love and faithfulness. At mid- 
night the fugitive crept out of the house in the 
garb of a servant, carrying a bundle and follow- 
ing one of his friends who walked in front with 
a dignified air wearing two swords, as if he 
were the master. By back streets and dark 
lanes they found their way to the water's edge, 
where a small boat was already in waiting. 
Neesima was placed in the bottom of the boat 
and covered up with a tarpaulin as if he were a 
cargo of provisions ; and then swiftly, but with 
muffled oars, the boatman pulled out to the 
schooner. A rope was thrown over the side, 
and the cargo, suddenly becoming very much 
alive, scrambled on board and hurried below. 

That night he never slept a wink, for he 
knew that the worst danger was yet to come. 
In those days every vessel leaving Hakodate 
harbour was keenly searched at the last 
moment to make sure that no Japanese sub- 
ject was secreted anywhere on board. Early 
next morning the police boat was seen coming 
off to the schooner for this purpose ; and 
Neesima felt that his hour of destiny was at 
hand. But Captain Savory had laid his plans 

77 



A Japanese Romance 

carefully too, for he also was running a risk ; 
and he hid his dangerous passenger in a part 
of the ship where the watch-dogs of the port 
never thought of looking for him. The search 
was over at last ; the anchor weighed ; the sails 
spread to an off-shore breeze. The Berlin 
forged her way through the shipping and out 
to the open sea. Neesima was now safe and 
free. It was on i8 July, 1864, and the hero of 
our story was twenty-one years of age. 

After a very disagreeable passage to Shanghai 
and ten days of wretchedness and uncertainty 
in that busy port, where he could not get rid 
of the idea that even yet he might be betrayed 
and sent back to Japan, our adventurer found 
another American vessel, the Wild Rover^ 
bound for Boston, and succeeded in persuad- 
ing the captain to take him on board without 
wages as his own personal servant. The voyage 
was a tedious one, for the Wild Rover was a 
*Hramp," which sailed here and there about 
the China seas for eight months before turning 
homewards, and spent four months more on the 
ocean passage. While they were lying in Hong- 
Kong harbour Neesima discovered a Chinese 

78 



A Japanese Romance 

New Testament in a shop, and felt that he must 
secure it at all costs. But he had not a copper 
of his own, and having promised to work his 
passage without wages, felt that he could not 
ask the captain for any money. At last he be- 
thought himself of his sword, which, being 
a samurai^ he had brought with him as a matter 
of course. Could he honourably part with this 
weapon which marked the dignity of his caste, 
and was to him like his shield to a young 
Spartan — an indispensable badge of his own 
self-respect? He was not long in deciding. 
The Japanese sword was soon in the hands of a 
dealer, and Neesima triumphantly bore his prize 
back to the ship. He read the book day and 
night, and found in it answers to some of the 
questions which had so long perplexed his mind. 
When the Wild Rover reached Boston our 
hero's trials were by no means over. The Civil 
War had lately ended. Work was scarce ; the 
price of everything was high. Nobody wanted 
this Japanese lad with his *^ pidgin'* English 
and his demand to be sent to school. He 
began to fear that the hopes of years might 
only have been delusions aiter all. **I could 

79 



A Japanese Romance 

not read book very cheerfully," he remarks, 
**and I am only looking around myself a long 
time as a lunatic." 

It is quite characteristic of his romantic ex- 
periences that his first real comfort came from 
a copy of Robinson Crusoe which he picked up 
for a few cents in a second-hand bookstore. 
Possibly he felt that there were some analogies 
between his adventures and trials and those of 
the hero of Defoe's great romance, and that he 
was almost as friendless and solitary on the 
shores of this great continent as the ship- 
wrecked mariner on that lonely island beach. 
But what appealed to him most of all was 
Crusoe's prayers. Hitherto he had cried to 
God as an unknown God, feeling all the while 
that perhaps God had no eyes to see him, no 
ears to listen for him. Now he learned from 
Crusoe's manner of praying that in all his 
troubles he must cry to God as a present, 
personal friend. And so day by day, in the 
full belief that God was listening, he uttered 
this prayer: *^ Please don't cast me away into 
miserable condition. Please let me reach my 
great aim." 

80 



A Japanese Romance 

Neesima's worst anxieties were nearly over 
now. His ** great aim" was almost in sight. 
As soon as the Wild Rover reached Boston, 
the captain had gone off on a long visit to his 
friends, not thinking much about his Japanese 
cabin-boy or expecting to see him again. But 
on his return to his ship some weeks after, he 
found ^*Joe," as the lad was called on ship- 
board, still hovering about the vessel as his one 
ark of refuge. This led him to speak to his 
owner, a Mr. Hardy, of the queer young 
Oriental he had brought to America ; and Mr, 
Hardy, who was a large-hearted and generous 
Christian man, at once declared that he would 
make some provision for the poor fellow. His 
first idea was to employ him as a house 
servant ; but when his wife and he met the 
youth and heard his wonderful story, they saw 
immediately that this was no ordinary immi- 
grant of the stowaway order ; and instead of 
making him a servant they took him into their 
family practically as an adopted son, and gave 
him a thorough education, first in an academy 
at Andover and afterwards at Amherst College, 
It was in token of this adoption that, when he 

F 8l 



A Japanese Romance 

was baptized as a member of the Christian 
Church, he took his full name of Joseph 
Hardy Neesima. On shipboard, as has been 
mentioned, he was called ^^Joe," the sailors 
having decided that he must have some short 
and handy name, and *^Joe" suggesting itself 
as convenient. ^^Keep the name," Mr. Hardy 
said after hearing how it was given. For he 
felt that, like another Joseph, who went down 
to Egypt as a captive and became the saviour 
of his brethren, Joseph Neesima, the Japanese 
runaway, might yet become a benefactor to his 
country. He lived long enough to see his 
hopes much more than realized. 

After graduating honourably at Amherst 
College, Neesima entered himself a student at 
Andover Theological Seminary, with the view 
of being ordained as a fully qualified missionary 
to his own countrymen. Soon after this a 
pathway for his return to Japan opened up in a 
manner which was almost dramatic. Since his 
departure from Hakodate in 1864, the chariot 
wheels of progress had been moving rapidly in 
the land of his birth. Japan was beginning to 
deserve in a wider sense than before its name 

82 



A Japanese Romance 

of *^The Land of the Rising Sun." Instead 
of closing all her doors and windows and 
endeavouring to shut out the light at every 
chink, she was now eager to live and move in 
the full sunshine of Western knowledge. The 
great political and social revolution had taken 
place. The Mikado had issued that epoch- 
making proclamation in which he declared : 
**The uncivilized customs of former times will 
be broken ; the impartiality and justice dis- 
played in the workings of nature adopted as a 
basis of action ; and intellect and learning will 
be sought for throughout the world in order to 
establish the foundations of empire." 

It was in pursuance of this new policy that 
there came to Washington in the winter of 
1871-72 a distinguished embassy from the 
Imperial Court of Japan, which had for its 
special commission to inspect and report upon 
the workings of Western civilization. The 
embassy soon felt the need of some one who 
could not only act as intrepreter, but assist it in 
the task of examining the institutions, and 
especially the educational institutions, of for- 
eign lands. For some time Mr. Mori, the 

83 



A Japanese Romance 

Japanese Minister in the United States, had 
had his eye on his young countryman at An- 
dover, and he now invited him to Washington 
to be introduced to the embassy. So favour- 
able was the impression produced by his per- 
sonal appearance, and so evident was it that he 
was thoroughly conversant with the principles 
and methods of Western culture, that he was 
immediately requested to accompany the am- 
bassadors in the capacity of adviser, on their 
tour through the United States and Europe ; 
while overtures of the most flattering kind 
were made to him, with brilliant prospects in 
the political world whenever he returned to his 
native land. But Neesima's mind was now 
fully made up regarding his work in life. 
When he returned to Japan it would be not as 
a politician, but as a Christian missionary. In 
the meantime, however, he willingly put his 
services at the disposal of the Mikado's em- 
bassy, and thereby not only greatly enlarged 
his experience, but gained influential friends 
among the rising statesmen of Japan, friends 
who were afterwards of no small help to him 
in his effort to promote among his countrymen 

84 



A Japanese Romance 

the cause of Christian civilization. The special 
task was assigned to him of drawing up a 
paper on **The Universal Education of Japan." 
He discharged the duty with such ability that 
his essay became the basis of the report sub- 
sequently made by the embassy on the subject 
of education. And this report, with certain 
modifications, was the foundation of the 
Japanese system of education as it has existed 
ever since. 

After a year had been spent in this interest- 
ing way, Neesima returned to Andover, and 
on the completion of his theological course was 
ordained by the American Board of Missions 
as an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen, his 
foster-father, Mr. Hardy, undertaking to pro- 
vide for his support. Ten years had now 
elapsed from the time when he was smuggled 
out of Japan in the hold of a little schooner — 
a poor and unknown lad, and a criminal in the 
eyes of the law. He was about to return a 
highly cultured Christian gentleman, with not 
a few influential friends on both sides of the 
Pacific. And he was returning with a purpose. 
He had found the light he came to seek, but 

8s 



A Japanese Romance 

he was far from being satisfied with that. His 
aim now was to be a light-bringer to Japan. 
He was deeply conscious of the truth that 

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves. 

He was unwilling, says Dr. Davis, his col- 
league in after years and one of his biographers, 
*^to go back with a full heart but with an 
empty hand." His purpose was to start a 
Christian College in which he could meet the 
craving of young Japan for Western knowledge 
— the craving which he knew so well — while at 
the same time he might surround the students 
with a Christian atmosphere, and train some of 
them to be preachers and teachers of Jesus 
Christ. But he could not start a college with- 
out means, and where the means were to come 
from he did not know. 

He spoke of his plans in the first place to 
various members of the American Board. But 
the Board's hands were full, and he met with 
no encouragement. Then he took counsel 
with himself. It had been arranged that before 
leaving America he should give an address at 
the annual public meeting of the Board, and 

86 



A Japanese Romance 

he determined to utilize this opportunity. To 
the very best of his ability he prepared a 
speech. But when he stepped on to the plat- 
form and faced the great audience, a fate befell 
him which has often come to public speakers at 
a critical moment in the beginning of their 
careers. His carefully arranged ideas all dis- 
appeared ; his mind became a perfect blank ; 
and every one present thought that he had 
completely broken down. But suddenly a 
thought flashed into his mind, opening up an 
entirely fresh line of address, and for fifteen 
minutes, while the tears streamed down his 
cheeks, he pleaded the cause of his country 
with such overwhelming earnestness that at the 
close of his short speech 5000 dollars were sub- 
scribed on the spot, and Neesima knew that 
the foundation-stone of a Christian College in 
Japan was already laid. 

It was characteristic of our hero's indomi- 
table courage that when he reached Japan he 
started his college, which he called the 
^^Doshisha," or ^^Company of One Endea- 
vour " — not in any city of the coast, where 
Western ideas had become familiar, but in 

87 



A Japanese Romance 

Kyoto itself, the sacred city of the interior, a 
city of 6000 temples and the very heart of the 
religious life of Old Japan. In this place, 
where Buddhism and Shintoism had flourished 
unchallenged for a thousand years, Neesima 
was subjected for a time to the furious hatred 
of the native priests and even to the oppo- 
sition of the magistrates. For the most part 
these men had no objections to Western 
education, but Christian education they would 
have liked to suppress. It was now that he 
realized the advantage of the friendship of 
the members of the embassy of 187 1-2. 
Several of those gentlemen, including the 
present Marquis Ito, had become prominent 
members of the Japanese Cabinet, and they 
did not a little to remove difficulties out of 
Neesima's way. 

And so the Doshisha took root and flourished, 
until in the last year of its founder's life, when 
he had been engaged in his work for fifteen 
years, the number of students in all depart- 
ments, young women as well as young men, 
had risen to over 900. Neesima wore himself 
out by his labours, and died at the compara- 



A Japanese Romance 

lively early age of 47, just when he had taken 
steps to broaden out the Doshisha College into 
the Doshisha University, and had secured large 
sums for this purpose, including a single gift 
of 100,000 dollars from a gentleman in New 
England, and a collection of 31,000 yen sub- 
scribed at a dinner-party in Tokyo in the house 
of Count Inouye, after those present had been 
addressed by Neesima himself, who was one of 
the guests. 

Neesima's widow has fulfilled his last wish, 
spoken from the depths of a humble Christian 
heart : ** Raise no monument after my death. 
It is enough, if on a wooden cross there stand 
the words, * the grave of Joseph Neesima.'" 
But the Doshisha is Neesima's living monu- 
ment in Japan. More than 5000 students have 
passed through it, of whom in 1903 above 
eighty were preachers of the Gospel, 161 
were teachers, 27 were Government officials, 
and 16 were newspaper editors. By turning 
out a succession of highly educated men and 
women trained under Christian influences, 
Neesima's college has contributed no small 
part in the creation of that New Japan which 



A Japanese Romance 

has so swiftly stepped in these late years into 
the foremost rank of the great company of 



nations, 



The chief authority for this chapter is A Maker of New Japan : 
Joseph Hardy Neesima^ by Rev. J. D. Davis, d.d. (Fleming H. 
Re veil Co.) 



90 



"FROM FAR FORMOSA" 



CHAPTER IV 
"FROM FAR FORMOSA" 

George Leslie Mackay — A lawless land — The Malay and the China- 
man — Dentistry and the Gospel — A cruel plot — The capture of 
Bang-kah — The barbarians of the plain — The Kap-tsu-lan fisher- 
men — The mountain head-hunters — A Christmas night in a head- 
hunter's house. 

FOR the title of this chapter we have taken 
the name of a book by Dr. George Leslie 
Mackay, of the Canadian Presbyterian Church, 
whose acquaintance with Formosa and its 
people — the people of the mountains as well 
as of the plains — is of an altogether unique 
kind. The title is appropriate, for though on 
the map Formosa is not more distant than 
China or Japan, it is much farther off than the 
moon to the vast majority of people, so far as 
any knowledge of it is concerned. Indeed, 
until it became a storm centre of the Chino- 
Japanese War of 1895, and passed under the 
sway of the Mikado, and was thus made an 

93 



* From Far Formosa " 



object of fresh interest to the Western world, 
there were numbers of fairly well-informed 
people who knew no more about it than that it 
was an island somewhere in the Eastern Seas. 
But more than thirty years ago it had attracted 
the attention of Mr. Mackay, a young Cana- 
dian of Highland Scottish descent. Sent out 
to China as a missionary by the Presbyterian 
Church of Canada, which gave him a pretty 
free hand in the selection of a definite sphere, 
he chose the northern part of Formosa — per- 
fectly virgin soil so far as any Christian work 
was concerned. The evangelization of North 
Formosa was a hard and dangerous task to be 
attempted by a single man, but Mackay flung 
himself into it with all the enthusiasm of a 
Celt, as well as the steady devotion of a brave 
soldier of the Church militant. 

Formosa was a wild and lawless land, with 
its mixture of mutually hostile races, its de- 
based Mongolians and savage Malayans, its 
men of the plains and men of the mountains, 
its corrupt officials in the towns and savage 
head-hunters in the hill forests. Mackay, how- 
ever, went about fearlessly, with a dentist's 

94 



'' From Far Formosa'' 

forceps (a wonderful talisman) in one hand and 
a Bible in the other. At one time we find him 
sleeping contentedly in the filthy cabin of a 
farmer on the swampy rice plains with a litter 
of pigs, it might almost be said, for his bed- 
fellows, the pig being a highly domesticated 
animal in Formosa, and treated by its master 
as an Englishman treats his pet dog. Again, 
he is far up amongst the mountains in the land 
of the head-hunters, where his sleeping apart- 
ment, which is also the sleeping apartment of 
the whole family, is adorned with a row of 
grinning skulls and queues that testifies to the 
prowess of his host in murdering Chinamen 
and other dwellers on the plains. It was by a 
courage and persistence which nothing could 
daunt that this young Scoto-Canadian won his 
way in Formosa, until to those who are in- 
terested in the history of missions, **Mackay 
of Formosa " seems as natural and inevitable a 
title as ^^Mackayof Uganda" or *^ Chalmers 
of New Guinea." 

Apart from the Japanese settlers who have 
planted themselves in the island since the war 
of 1895, the population of Formosa is divided 

95 



'' From Far Formosa" 

between the aborigines, who are of a Malayan 
stock, and the Chinese, who in ever-increasing 
numbers have poured in from the adjacent 
mainland. Though only half the size of Scot- 
land, the island is dominated by a range of 
mountains quite Alpine in their height, the 
loftiest rising to between 14,000 and 15,000 
feet above the sea. Along the coast, however, 
there are fertile stretches, perfectly flat, formed 
by the alluvial deposits washed down in the 
course of ages. On the richer of these plains, 
as well as on the lower reaches of the hills, the 
incoming Chinamen settled, usually by no 
better title than the right of might. *^ Rice- 
farms and tea-plantations took the place of 
forest tangle and wild plateau ; the rude ham- 
lets of another race vanished ; towns and cities 
with their unmistakable marks of the ' Middle 
Kingdom ' took their place ; and the Chinese 
became a superior power in Formosa." 

To the Chinese, of course, the original in- 
habitants without exception were ^^ barbarians," 
but the Malayan population, though compris- 
ing a great many different tribes, may be 
roughly divided into two well-defined sections. 

96 



({ 



From Far Formosa" 



First there are those who have accepted Chinese 
authority, and in a modified form have adopted 
the Chinese civiHzation and religion. These go 
by the name of Pe-po-hoan, or ^^ barbarians of 
the plain." Then there are those who have 
absolutely refused to acknowledge the Chinese 
invaders as the masters of Formosa, and, 
though driven into the mountains and forests, 
have retained their ancestral freedom. These 
are the much-dreaded Chhi-hoan or ^^raw bar- 
barians," whose manner of life in many respects 
recalls that of their kinsmen the Hill Dyaks of 
Borneo. Among these mountain savages, as 
formerly among the Dyaks, head-hunting is 
cultivated as a fine art. They hate the Chinese 
with a deadly hatred, and hardly less their 
own Pe-po-hoan kinsfolk who have yielded to 
the stranger and accepted his ways. Pe-po- 
hoan and Chinaman alike are considered as fair 
game, and their skulls are mingled indiscrim- 
inately in the ghastly collection which is the 
chief glory of the mountain brave, as it forms 
the principal adornment of his dwelling. 

Naturally it was among the Chinese in the 
towns that Mackay began his work. He was 
G 97 



/' From Far Formosa '' 

fortunate in gathering round him very early 
some earnest young men, who not only ac- 
cepted Christianity for themselves, but became 
his disciples and followers with a view to 
teaching and helping others. These students, 
as they were called, accompanied him on all 
his tours, not only gaining valuable experience 
thereby, but being of real assistance in various 
ways. For instance, Mackay soon discovered 
that the people of Formosa, partly because of 
the prevalence of malarial fever, and partly 
because they are constantly chewing the betel- 
nut, have very rotten teeth and suffer dread- 
fully from toothache. Though not a doctor, 
he knew a little of medicine and surgery, 
having attended classes in these subjects by 
way of preparing himself for his work abroad ; 
but he found that nothing helped him so much 
in making his way among the people as his 
modest skill in dentistry. The priests and 
other enemies of Christianity might persuade 
the people that their fevers and other ailments 
had been cured not by the medicines of the 
** foreign devil," but by the intervention of 
their own gods. The power of the missionary, 

98 



*^ From Far Formosa'* 

however, to give instantaneous relief to one in 
the agonies of toothache was unmistakable, 
and tooth-extraction worked wonders in break- 
ing down prejudice and opposition. It was 
here that some of the students proved espe- 
cially useful. They learned to draw teeth 
almost if not quite as well as Mackay him- 
self, so that between them they were able to 
dispose of as many as 500 patients in an 
afternoon. 

The usual custom of Mackay and his little 
band of students as they journeyed about the 
country was to take their stand in an open 
space, often on the stone steps of a temple, 
and after singing a hymn or two to attract 
attention, to proceed to the work of tooth- 
pulling, thereafter inviting the people to listen 
to their message. For the most part the crowd 
was very willing to listen. Sudden relief from 
pain produces gratitude even towards a 
** foreign devil," and the innate Chinese sus- 
picion of some black arts or other evil designs 
was always guarded against by scrupulously 
placing the tooth of each patient in the palm 
of his own hand. The people began to love 

99 '' '•• 



'* From Far Formosa " 

Mackay, and this opened their hearts to his 
preaching. Men and women came to confess 
their faith, and in one large village which was 
the centre of operations there were so many 
converts that a preaching-hall had to be se- 
cured, which Sunday after Sunday was packed 
by an expectant crowd. 

Opposition is often the best proof of success, 
and in Mackay's case it soon came in cruel 
and tragic forms. A cunning plot was laid 
between the priestly party and the civil officials 
to accuse a number of these Chinese Christians 
of conspiring to assassinate the mandarin. Six 
innocent men were seized and put in the stocks 
in the dungeons of the city of Bang-kah. 
Mock trials were held, in the course of which 
the prisoners were bambooed, made to kneel 
on red-hot chains, and tortured in various 
other ways. At last one morning two of the 
heroic band, a father and son, were taken out 
of their dungeon and dragged off to the place 
of execution. The son's head was chopped 
off before his father's eyes, after which the old 
man too was put to death. Then their heads, 
placed in baskets, were carried slowly back to 

100 



*' From Far Formosa'' 

Bang-kah with the notice fixed above them, 
Jip kon-e lang than (*^ Heads of the Chris- 
tians "). All along the way the town-crier 
summoned the multitude to witness the fate of 
those who followed the ^* barbarian.'' And 
when the walls of Bang-kah were reached the 
two heads were fastened above the city gate, 
just as the heads of criminals or martyrs used 
to be set above the Netherbow at Edinburgh 
or Temple Bar in London, for a terror and 
a warning to all who passed by. It was a 
cruel fate, and yet better than that of the 
remaining prisoners. Their lot was to be 
slowly starved or tortured to death in their 
filthy dungeons. 

But in spite of these horrors — partly, we 
might say, because of them — the number of 
Christians in North Formosa steadily grew, 
until at length, as Dr. Mackay puts it, '' Bang- 
kah itself was taken." Not that this important 
place, ^*the Gibraltar of heathendom" in the 
island, was transformed into a Christian city. 
But it ceased, at all events, to be fiercely anti- 
Christian, and came to honour the very man 
whom it had hustled, hooted at, pelted wiih 

ZOI 



'' From Far Formosa '' 

mud and rotten eggs, and often plotted to kill. 
A striking proof of the change was given by 
and by when Mackay was about to return to 
Canada on a visit. The head men of the city 
sent a deputation to ask him to allow them to 
show their appreciation of himself and his 
work by according him a public send-off. He 
was not sure about it at first, not caring much 
for demonstrations of this kind, but on reflec- 
tion concluded that it might be well, and might 
do good to the Christian cause, to allow them 
to have their own way. So he was carried 
through the streets of Bang-kah to the jetty in 
a silk-lined sedan-chair, preceded by the offi- 
cials of the place, and followed by three hun- 
dred soldiers and bands of civilians bearing 
flags and banners, to a musical accompaniment 
provided by no fewer than eight Chinese or- 
chestras made up of cymbals, drums, gongs, 
pipes, guitars, mandolines, tambourines, and 
clarionets. Heathens and Christians alike 
cheered him as he boarded the steam-launch 
which was to take him off from the shore, while 
the Christians who had stood firmly by him 
through troublous times broke into a Chinese 



'' From Far Formoscr' 

version of the old Scottish paraphrase, ^^Tm 
not ashamed to own my Lord." 

But while Mackay found his base of opera- 
tions among the Chinese in the north and west 
of Formosa, he did not forget the Malayan 
aborigines, whether those of the plains or those 
of the mountains. As soon as he had got a 
firm footing and gathered a band of competent 
helpers around him, he began to turn his atten- 
tion to the Pe-po-hoan, the ^^ barbarians of the 
plain," who cultivate their rice-farms in the low- 
lying and malarial districts along the north- 
east coast. He had already experienced many 
of the drawbacks of Formosan travel. He had 
known what it was to be swept down the cur- 
rent in trying to ford dangerous streams, to 
push his way through jungles full of lurking 
serpents, to encounter hostile crowds in village 
or town who jeered at the *^ foreign devil," or 
regarded him, as the boy said of birds in his 
essay on the subject, as being *^very useful to 
throw stones at," And night when it came he 
had often found not less trying than day, pos- 
sibly still more so. The filthy rest-houses were 
not places of much rest to a white man. Pigs 

103 



'* From Far Formosa" 

frisked out and in, and slept or grunted beneath 
the traveller's bed. The bed itself was a plank 
with brick legs, the mattress a dirty grass mat 
on which coolies had smoked opium for years. 
And when, overpowered by weariness, he fell 
asleep, he was apt to be suddenly awakened by 
the attacks of what he humorously describes as 
^* three generations of crawling creatures." 

Greater dangers and worse discomforts than 
these, however, had now to be faced in carry- 
ing the Gospel to the country of the Pe-po- 
hoan. In the mountains over which it was 
necessary to pass in order to cross from the 
west coast to the east, Mackay and his students 
had to run the gauntlet of the stealthy head- 
hunters. They had more than one narrow 
escape. Passing by the mouth of a gorge one 
day, they heard in the distance blood-curdling 
yells and screams, and presently a Chinese 
came rushing up all out of breath and told thern 
that he and four others had just been attacked 
by the savages, and that his companions were 
all speared and beheaded, while he had only 
managed to escape with his life. When the 
plains were reached the Pe-po-hoan did not 

104 



'' From Far Formosa*' 

prove at first a friendly or receptive people. 
From village after village they were turned 
away with reviling, the inhabitants often set- 
ting their wolfish dogs upon them. The 
weather was bad, and in that low-lying region 
the roads were soon turned into quagmires 
where the feet sank into eighteen inches of 
mud. When night fell a Chinese inn would 
have been welcome enough ; but sometimes no 
better sleeping-place could be had than the lee 
side of a dripping rice-stack. 

But after a while things began to improve. 
Like Jesus in Galilee, Mackay found his first 
disciples in the Kap-tsu-Ian plain among the 
fishermen — bold, hardy fellows, who live in 
scattered villages along that coast. Three of 
these fishers came to him one day and said, 
**You have been going through and through 
our plain, and no one has received you. Come 
to our village, and we will listen to you." They 
led Mackay and his students to their village, 
gave them a good supper of rice and fish, and 
then one of them took a large conch shell, 
which in other days had served as a war- 
trumpet, and summoned the whole population 

los 



'' From Far Formosa" 

to an assembly. Till the small hours of the 
morning Mackay was kept busy preaching, 
conversing, discussing, and answering ques- 
tions. The very next day these people deter- 
mined to have a church of their own in which 
to worship the true God. They sailed down 
the coast to the forest country farther south to 
cut logs of wood, and though they were at- 
tacked by the savages while doing so, and 
some of them wounded, they returned in due 
course with a load of timber. Bricks were 
made out of mud and rice-chaff, and a primi- 
tive little chapel was soon erected, in which 
every evening at the blowing of the conch the 
entire village met to hear the preacher. Mackay 
stayed two months in this place, and by that 
time it had become nominally Christian. Several 
times, he tells us, he dried his dripping clothes 
at night in front of a fire made of idolatrous 
paper, idols, and ancestral tablets which the 
people had given him to destroy. One reason 
for this rapid and wholesale conversion to 
Christianity no doubt lay in the fact that the 
Chinese idolatry which these Pe-po-hoan fisher- 
men had been induced to accept never came 

lo6 



'^ From Far Formosa '* 

very near to their hearts. Originally they or 
their fathers had been nature-worshippers, as 
all the mountain savages still are, and many of 
them were inclined to look upon the rites and 
ceremonies to which they submitted as unwel- 
come reminders of their subjection to an alien 
race. 

What took place in this one village was soon 
repeated in several others on the Kap-tsu-lan 
plain. Even in places where men, women, and 
children had rejected him at first and hurled 
** the contumelious stone " at his head, Mackay 
came to be welcomed by the people as their 
best friend. And by and by no fewer than 
nineteen chapels sprang up in that plain, the 
preachers and pastors in every case being native 
Christians, and several of them being drawn 
from among the Pe-po-hoan themselves. 

But something must now be said about the 
Chhi-hoan, or savage barbarians of the moun- 
tains. More than once in the course of his 
tours among the Pe-po-hoan Mackay narrowly 
escaped from the spears and knives of these 
warriors, who live by hunting wild animals in 
the primeval forests, but whose peculiar delight 

107 



'' From Far Formosa** 

it is to hunt for human heads, and above all for 
the heads of the hated Chinese. On one occa- 
sion a party of Chinese traders with whom he was 
staying in an outpost settlement was attacked 
by a band of two dozen savages ; and though 
the latter were eventually beaten off, it was not 
till they had secured the heads of three of 
Mackay's trading friends. 

According to the unwritten law of the moun- 
tain villages, no man is permitted to marry until 
he has proved his prowess by bringing at least 
one head to his chief, while eminence in the 
estimation of the tribe always depends upon 
the number of skulls which a brave can display 
under the eaves or along the inside walls of his 
hut. Mackay tells of one famous chief who 
was captured at last by the Chinese authorities, 
and who said, as he was led out to execution, 
that he was not ashamed to die, because in his 
house in the mountains he could show a row of 
skulls only six short of a hundred. 

A head-hunter's outfit consists, in the first 
place, of a long, light thrusting-spear with an 
arrow-shaped blade eight inches in length. In 
his belt he carries a cruel-looking crooked knife 

1 08 



'* From Far Formosa'' 

with which to slash off his victim's head. Over 
the shoulder he wears a bag of strong, twisted 
twine, capable of carrying two or three heads 
at a time. From the attacks of these blood- 
thirsty savages none who live or move on the 
borderland between mountain and plain are ever 
secure by day or by night. In the daytime the 
hunters usually go out singly, concealing them- 
selves in the tall grass of the level lands, or 
behind some stray boulder by a path through a 
glen along which sooner or later a traveller is 
likely to pass. When his quarry is within spear- 
thrust, the crouching hunter leaps upon him, 
striking for his heart ; and soon a headless 
corpse is lying on the ground, while the savage, 
with his prize slung round his neck, is trotting 
swiftly, by forest paths known only to himself, 
towards his distant mountain home. 

But more commonly the attack is made at 
night, and made by a party of braves. In this 
case everything is carefully planned for weeks 
before. Watchers on the hill-tops, or scouts 
lurking in the bush along the edge of the forests, 
report as to when a village festivity is likely to 
make its defenders less watchful, or when the 

109 



'^ From Far Formosa'* 

fishermen have gone off on a distant fishing 
expedition, leaving their homes to the care of 
none but womenfolk. Having selected a house 
for attack, the savages silently surround it in 
the darkness, creeping stealthily nearer and 
nearer until, at a signal from the leader, one of 
them moves on before the rest and sets fire to 
the thatch. When the unfortunate inmates, 
aroused from sleep by the crackle of the flames 
and half-stifled by the smoke, attempt to rush 
out of the door, they are instantly speared and 
their heads secured. In a few moments, before 
the nearest neighbours have had time to come 
to the rescue, or even been awakened from their 
slumbers, the hunters have disappeared into 
the night. 

The return to the village of a successful head- 
hunting party is a scene of fiendish delight, in 
which men, women, and children alike all take 
a part. Hour after hour dancing and drinking 
is carried on, as the Chhi-hoan gloat over the 
death of their enemies and praise the prowess 
of their warriors. On rare occasions the heads 
of the victims are boiled and the flesh eaten, 
but it is quite common to boil the brain to a jelly 



^' From Far Formosa '' 

and eat it with the gusto of revenge. Dr. 
Mackay has himself been present in a mountain 
village on the return of a head-hunting party, 
and has been offered some of this brain jelly as 
a rare treat. 

One who goes among such people must liter- 
ally take his life in his hands, for he may at any 
moment fall a victim to treachery or to the 
inherited passion for human blood. But perfect 
courage and unvarying truth and kindness will 
carry a traveller far, and Mackay had the further 
advantage of being possessed of medical and 
surgical skill. He owed something, moreover, 
to his not having a pigtail. ^^ You must be a 
kinsman of ours," the Chhi-hoan said, as they 
examined the missionary's back hair. And so 
by degrees Mackay came to live in close touch 
with these savages, and found that, apart from 
their head-hunting instincts, they had some 
good and amiable qualities of their own. From 
time to time he visited them as he got oppor- 
tunity, and was even able in some cases to bring 
a measure of light to very benighted minds. 

One year Mackay spent a Christmas holiday 
high up among the mountains as the guest of 



** From Far Formosa " 

one of the barbarian chiefs. The house was a 
single large room, full thirty feet long, in which 
at night a fire blazed at either end. Around 
one fire the women squatted spinning cord for 
nets, around the other the braves smoked and 
discussed a head-hunting expedition which they 
proposed to undertake before long. On the 
walls were the customary rows of skulls, their 
grinning teeth lighted up fitfully by the flicker- 
ing gleams from the burning fir logs. In the 
midst of this promiscuous crowd, which inclu- 
ded a mother and her new-born babe, Mackay 
with his students had to sleep that night. But 
before the time came to lie down and rest, he 
proposed that he and his Christian companions 
should give a song, a proposal which secured 
silence at once, for the aborigines are much 
more musical than the Chinese, and are very 
fond of singing. And so on Christmas night, 
in that wild spot where no white man had ever 
been before, and to that strange audience, 
Mackay and his little band of Chinese converts 
sang some Christian hymns. And after that he 
told the listening savages the story of the first 
Christmas night, and of the love of Him who 



'' From Far Formosa '' 

was born in the stable at Bethlehem for the 
head-hunters of Formosa, no less than for the 
white men whose home was over the sea. 



Note. — The material for this chapter is derived from Dr. Mackay's 
book, From Far For?nosa (Edinburgh : Oliphant, Anderson, and 
Ferrier). 



113 



A HEROINE OF TIBET 



CHAPTER V 
A HEROINE OF TIBET 

Mysterious Lhasa — The lady who tried to lift the veil — In the Hima- 
layas — On the Chino-Tibetan frontier — The caravan for Lhasa — 
Attacked by brigands — The kilted Goloks — Among perpetual 
snows — A Tibetan love story — Noga the traitor — The arrest — 
Return to China — In the Chumbi Valley. 

WHEN an armed British expedition strug- 
gled over the Karo-la Pass, which 
exceeds Mont Blanc in height, and entered 
Lhasa on the 3rd of August, 1904, there was a 
brief lifting of the veil of mystery which has 
hung for centuries around the city of the Grand 
Lama. But the wreathing snows, which began 
to fall so heavily around the little army before 
it reached the frontiers of India on the return 
journey, were almost symbolical of the fact that 
Lhasa was already wrapping herself once more 
in her immemorial veil of cold aloofness from 
European eyes. Prior to the arrival of this 
military expedition, only one Englishman, 
Thomas Manning, had succeeded in reaching 

117 



A Heroine of Tibet 

Lhasa, and it will soon be a century since his 
bold march was made. Sixty years ago two 
French missionary priests, the Abbes Hue and 
Gabet, undertook their celebrated journey from 
China to Lhasa, which they afterwards de- 
scribed in a very interesting book. But though 
they reached their goal, they gained little by it, 
for they were soon deported back to China 
again. No Protestant missionary has ever set 
foot in Lhasa, and what is more, no Protestant 
missionary, with one exception, has ever made 
a determined attempt to reach it. And to the 
honour of her sex be it said, the one who made 
the attempt and all but succeeded was a lady, 
and a lady with no other following than a 
couple of faithful Asiatic servants. 

The character and career of Miss Annie R. 
Taylor remind one at some points of the late 
General Gordon. There is the same shrinking 
from public notice, the same readiness to be 
buried from the sight of Europe in some distant 
and difficult task, the same courage which fears 
nothing, the same simple, unquestioning trust in 
the care and guidance of a heavenly Father. 
Miss Taylor went out to China in 1884 in the 

118 



A Heroine of Tibet 

service of the China Inland Mission, and worked 
for some time at Tau-chau, a city which lies in 
the extreme north-west and quite near the Tibe- 
tan frontier. In 1887 she paid a visit to the great 
Lama monastery of Kum-bum, the very monas- 
tery in which MM. Hue and Gabet had stayed 
long before while they were learning the Tibetan 
language. The memory of these two adven- 
turous priests may have stirred a spirit of 
imitation in a kindred heart, but what chiefly 
pressed upon Miss Taylor's thoughts as she 
stood in the Kum-bum lamasery and looked 
out to the west, was the vision of that great 
unevangelized land which stretched beyond the 
horizon for a thousand miles. That this land 
was not only shut, but almost hermetically 
sealed, against foreigners she knew perfectly 
well. But her dictionary, like Napoleon's, did 
not contain the word *^ impossible." She re- 
called Christ's marching orders to His Church, 
^^Go ye into all the world ! " and said to her- 
self, *^Our Lord has given us no commands 
which are impossible to be carried out." And 
if no one else was ready in Christ's name to try 
to scale ^^ the roof of the w^orld," and press on 

119 



A Heroine of Tibet 

into the sacred city of Lhasa itself, she deter- 
mined that she, at all events, would make the 
attempt. 

Her first idea was to make India her point of 
departure, for Lhasa lies much nearer to India 
than to China, though the comparative short- 
ness of this route is balanced by the fact that 
it leads right over the Himalayas. She went 
accordingly to Darjeeling, pressed on into 
Sikkim, which had not yet passed under British 
rule, and settled down near a Tibetan fort called 
Kambajong, with the view of mastering the 
language thoroughly before proceeding any 
farther. From the first the Tibetan suspicion 
of all strangers showed itself. The people 
would often ask her in an unpleasantly sugges- 
tive manner what they should do with her body 
if she died. Her answer was, that she had no 
intention of dying just then. The intentions of 
the natives, however, did not coincide with her 
own, and they next resorted to a custom they 
have of * spraying people dead." Their faith 
in the power of prayer did not hinder them 
from giving Heaven some assistance in getting 
their prayers answered. One day the chiefs 





^%^^i^Bw^, .i^BB^^^B 


■- ^ 


^ 


Jfe,. • -^^^■r ^^S^ ■ « - ■ ^Ml^tt^^HIMi) 






'^^■■■^■V 






A Heroine of Tibet 

wife invited Miss Taylor to dinner, and set 
before her an appetizing dish of rice and 
^gg^' She had not long partaken of it when 
she fell seriously ill, with all the symptoms 
of aconite poisoning. On her recovery she 
wisely left this district, and settled down to 
live the life of the natives themselves in a 
little hut near the Tibetan monastery of 
Podang Gumpa. 

After a year spent in this way, for ten months 
of which she never saw the face of a white per- 
son, she realized the impracticability of making 
her way to Lhasa by the Himalayan route, 
which is far more jealously guarded than the 
one from the frontiers of China. She decided, 
therefore, to return to China, and to make it 
her starting-point. Her time in Sikkim had 
not been wasted. In the first place, she had 
not only learned Tibetan thoroughly, but had 
acquired it in its purest form as spoken at 
Lhasa. In the next place, she had gained a 
friend and attendant who was to prove of in- 
valuable service to her in her future wanderings. 
A young Tibetan named Pontso, a native of 
Lhasa, had met with a serious accident while 



A Heroine of Tibet 

travelling on the frontiers of India. Some one 
directed him to the white lady for treatment. 
He had never seen a foreigner before, but the 
kindness and care with which Miss Taylor 
nursed him in his sufferings completely won 
his heart. He became a believer in the religion 
which prompted such goodness to a stranger, 
devoted himself thenceforth to the service of 
his benefactress, and justified the trust she 
placed in him by his unfailing courage and 
fidelity. 

Taking Pontso with her. Miss Taylor now 
sailed to Shanghai, made her way up the Yang- 
tse for 2,000 miles, and then on to Tau-chau 
on the Tibetan frontier. By way of preparing 
herself still further for her projected march 
into the interior, she visited a number of 
lamaseries in that region, made friends with 
the lamas, and learned everything she could 
about the Tibetan religion and ways of life 
and thought. 

About a year after her return to Tau-chau 
the opportunity came for which she had been 
waiting. Among her acquaintances in the 
town was a Chinese Mohammedan named 



A Heroine of Tibet 

Noga, whose wife, Erminie, was a Lhasa 
woman. Noga was a trader who had several 
times been to Lhasa, and on his last journey 
had brought away this Lhasa wife. Accord- 
ing to a Tibetan custom, he had married her 
only for a fixed term, and as the three years 
named in the bond were now fully up, Erminie 
was anxious to return to her native city, and 
Noga quite willing to convey her back. The 
only question was one of ways and means, and 
when they found that Miss Taylor wished to go 
to Lhasa, Noga made a proposal. He would 
himself guide her all the way to the capital, 
provided she supplied the horses and met all 
necessary expenses. Miss Taylor at once 
agreed to his terms, which, if the Chinaman 
had been honest, would have been advan- 
tageous to both parties. But Noga was a 
deep-dyed scoundrel, as Miss Taylor soon dis- 
covered to her cost. 

It was on the 2nd of September, 1892, that 
this brave Englishwoman set out on her heroic 
enterprise. She was accompanied by five Asi- 
atics — Noga and his wife, her faithful attendant 
Pontso, a young Chinese whom she had en- 

123 



A Heroine of Tibet 

gaged as an additional servant, and a Tibetan 
frontiersman, Nobgey by name, who asked 
permission to join the little company, as he also 
was bound for Lhasa. There were sixteen 
horses in the cavalcade, two mounts being pro- 
vided for most of the travellers, while there 
were several pack-horses loaded with tents, 
bedding, cloth for barter, presents for chiefs, 
and provisions for two months. 

They had not proceeded far into the wild 
country which begins immediately after the 
Chinese frontier is left behind, when their 
troubles commenced. They came suddenly 
upon a group of eight brigands who were 
haunting the mountain track for the express 
purpose of relieving travellers of their valu- 
ables. Fortunately the brigands had not noticed 
their approach, and were seated round a fire 
enjoying the favourite Tibetan meal of tea — a 
meal in more senses than one, for Tibetans 
thicken the beverage with a handful of barley 
meal, so that it becomes a kind of gruel. 
Moreover, the robbers were armed with old- 
fashioned matchlocks, the tinder-boxes of 
which it took some time to light, and as Miss 

124 



A Heroine of Tibet 

Taylor's party, though weaker in numbers, 
were better armed, they succeeded in beating 
off their assailants. 

Three days after, they overtook a caravan of 
friendly Mongols travelling in the same direction 
as themselves, and in view of their recent experi- 
ence, thought it wise to amalgamate their forces. 
Their satisfaction at being thus reinforced was 
not long-lived. Almost immediately after a 
band of brigands 200 strong swept down upon 
the caravan, entirely surrounded it, and began 
firing from all sides. Two men were killed and 
seven wounded ; resistance was hopeless, and 
the whole company had to surrender. The 
Mongols and Nobgey were robbed of every- 
thing, and had to turn back ; but as the brigand 
code of honour forbids war upon women. Miss 
Taylor and her four attendants were allowed to 
pass on their way, not, however, without being 
deprived of two of the horses and a good part 
of the luggage. 

The next stage of the journey lay through the 
land of a strange people known as the Goloks. 
This is a fierce and warlike race, bearing some 
resemblance both in habits and dress to the 

125 



A Heroine of Tibet 

Scotch Highlanders of other days. They draw 
up their sheepskin garments by a girdle so as 
to form a kind of kilt, and leave their knees 
bare, while covering the lower part of their 
limbs with cloth leggings fastened with garters 
of bright-coloured wool. Like the Highlanders 
of long ago, they have a great contempt for law 
and authority, and acknowledge neither Tibetan 
nor Chinese rule. The chief delight of their 
lives is to engage in forays upon people of more 
peaceful tastes and habits than themselves. 
Issuing in large bodies from their mountain 
glens under some fighting chieftain, they sweep 
down upon the people of some neighbouring 
tribe, and carry off as booty their cattle, horses, 
sheep, tents, and other belongings. Among 
the Goloks Miss Taylor would have fared even 
worse than she had already done at the hands 
of the brigands, but for the fact that the part of 
the tribe with which she first came in contact 
was ruled by a chieftainess, a woman named 
Wachu Bumo. On discovering that this white 
traveller was also a woman, Wachu Bumo took 
quite a fancy to her, and not only saw to it that 
she was treated courteously so long as she 

126 



A Heroine of Tibet 

remained in the Golok valleys, but insisted on 
furnishing her with an escort of two Golok horse- 
men to see her safely on her way for some dis- 
tance after she had left the country of these 
marauders. 

It is characteristic of Miss Taylor that in 
her little book, Pioneering in Tibet^ she says 
hardly anything about her own hardships and 
sufferings in that long march through one of 
the wildest regions of the world. For a great 
part of the way, it must be remembered, the 
route ran among mountains covered with per- 
petual snow. Rivers had to be crossed which 
knew neither bridge nor ferry nor ford. Winter 
too was coming on, and they had often to 
advance in the teeth of blinding storms of sleet 
and snow. In England Miss Taylor had been 
considered delicate, but a brave spirit and a 
strong will carried her through experiences 
which might well have broken down the strong- 
est physique. Shortly after they had left the 
land of the Goloks the cold and exposure proved 
too much for her Chinese servant, a tall, power- 
ful young man. Miss Taylor does not dwell 
upon the circumstances of his death, but a 

127 



A Heroine of Tibet 

glimpse like the following is suggestive by its 
very reticence : **We buried him at noon. A 
bright sun lightened up the snow-clad hills 
when the men dug up a few hard sods in 
some swampy ground close by, laid down the 
body in its shroud of white cotton cloth, and 
covered it as best they could with the frost- 
bound earth. At night the wolves were howl- 
ing round the grave. This was in the Peigo 
country." 

In a little mountain town called Gala Miss 
Taylor made the interesting acquaintance of a 
couple, Pa-tegn and Per-ma, whose marriage 
had a flavour of romance unusual in Tibet. 
From infancy Pa-tegn had been dedicated to 
the priesthood, and had been brought up 
accordingly in a lamasery. But when about 
twenty years of age he suddenly fell in love with 
Per-ma. The course of his true love could not 
possibly run smooth, for celibacy is as binding 
on a Buddhist lama as on a Romish priest. 
But **one fine day," as Miss Taylor puts it, 
**this Tibetan Abelard disappeared, and in 
company with Per-ma made his way to Lhasa." 
Here he discarded his priest's robe and became 

128 



A Heroine of Tibet 

a tailor. After a child had been born to them 
they decided to return to Gala, and by means 
of a judicious present succeeded in soothing the 
outraged feelings of the local chief. In the 
house of this couple Miss Taylor stayed for 
some time to rest from her fatigues, and when 
she was setting out again persuaded Pa-tegn, 
who was an experienced traveller and knew 
Lhasa well, to come with her in place of the 
Chinese attendant she had recently lost. It 
was fortunate for her that she secured his 
services. He proved a capable and devoted 
follower, and it would have gone ill with her, 
as she soon found out, but for his presence and 
help. 

They were now in the very heart of the 
mountains, and Noga, the Chinese guide, feel- 
ing that Miss Taylor was thoroughly in his 
power, began to appear in his true character. 
Both he and his wife had behaved very badly 
from the first, but it now became evident that 
his real purpose all along had been to rob and 
murder his employer before reaching Lhasa. 
More than once he made deliberate attempts on 
her life, but on each occasion the vigilance of 
I 129 



A Heroine of Tibet 

Pontso and Pa-tegn defeated his villainy ; and 
at last he contented himself with deserting her 
altogether, carrying off at the same time, along 
with his wife, a horse, a mule, and the larger 
of the two tents. 

The little party of three — Miss Taylor and 
two Tibetans — was now reduced to such straits 
for lack of food that the only remaining tent 
had to be bartered for the necessaries of life; 
and though it was now the middle of December 
in that awful climate, they had henceforth to 
sleep in the open air. When night fell they 
looked about for holes in the ground, so that 
they might have a little shelter from the high 
and piercing winds which in those elevated 
regions are constantly blowing. A march of 
several days brought them to the Dam-jau-er-la 
Pass, one of the loftiest and most dreaded 
passes in Tibet. Here the cold is so paralysing 
that it is not uncommon for some travellers in 
a caravan to be completely overpowered by it, 
so that they drop down helpless by the way- 
side. There they are simply left to perish, 
since any halt on their account might mean 
death to others of the company. 

130 



A Heroine of Tibet 

At length the waters of the Bo-Chu were 
crossed, the boundary of the sacred province of 
U, in which Lhasa stands, and the goal of the 
journey seemed almost in sight. But alas for 
their hopes ! In the middle of a deep gorge 
through which the path ran, two fully armed 
Tibetan soldiers sprang out from behind the 
rocks, ordered them to halt, and took them 
prisoners. This was on January 3rd, 1893. 
Miss Taylor soon learned to what this arrest 
was due. Noga, after deserting her, had 
hurried on in front for the purpose of lodging 
information that he had met two Tibetans 
conducting a European lady towards Lhasa. 
Guards were accordingly placed at all the ap- 
proaches, and Miss Taylor had walked into a 
prepared trap. For several days she was kept 
a prisoner, surrounded by about twenty soldiers, 
and having no better shelter by day or night 
than a narrow coffin-shaped hole in the ground. 
At last she and her two attendants were brought 
before some chiefs who had been summoned 
from Lhasa, and a trial was entered into which 
lasted for days, communication with the capital 
being kept up all the while by special messen- 

131 



A Heroine of Tibet 

gers. Word came from Lhasa that the white 
lady was to be treated courteously, and this 
injunction was carefully attended to. But the 
issue of the trial was never in doubt. When 
only three days' march from the Sacred City, 
nearer than any of the later European travellers 
had succeeded in getting, Miss Taylor had to 
turn back and retrace every step of the weary 
way from the frontiers of China. 

The return was even more trying than the 
advance, not only because hope was now turned 
to disappointment, but because winter in all its 
rigour now lay upon the land. The Tibetan 
authorities, though firm, were not unkind, and 
supplied Miss Taylor with provisions, some 
money, and two horses. But the Tibetan 
climate made up for any gentleness on the part 
of the Lhasa chiefs. The cold was almost un- 
speakable, and the food they tried to cook over 
their dung fires had often to be eaten half raw 
and little more than half warm, since at the 
great elevations of the mountain passes water 
boiled with very little heat. For twenty days 
at a stretch they had to sleep on the ground in 
the open air, the snow falling around them all 

132 



A Heroine of Tibet 

the while ; for tent they had none, and there 
was no sign of any human habitation. Their 
greatest difficulty, however, was to keep their 
horses from starving in that frozen land. In 
Tibet the emergency ration for horses in winter 
is raw goat*s flesh, which they eat greedily ; 
but Miss Taylor could not afford to buy goats. 
All that could be spared to the poor steeds was 
a little tea with cheese and butter stirred into 
it, with the result that the famishing animals 
ate the woollen clothing of their riders when- 
ever they got a chance. 

Miss Taylor reached China safely once more, 
seven months and ten days after she had set out 
for Lhasa from the city of Tau-chau. She made 
no further attempt to penetrate to the Sacred 
City. The very year (1893) which witnessed 
the discomfiture of her heroic effort was marked 
by the signing of the Sikkim-Tibet Convention, 
which secured a trade-mart at Yatung, on the 
Tibetan side of the Indian frontier, open to all 
British subjects for the purposes of trade. In 
this political event Miss Taylor's discerning eye 
saw a missionary opportunity. From China 
she returned once more to the Himalayas, and 

^33 



A Heroine of Tibet 

started her remarkable mission at Yatung, in the 
Chumbi Valley, where by and by she secured 
the assistance of two other ladies — Miss Fer- 
guson and Miss Foster. Nominally she is a 
trader, this being the ground of her right to 
settle down within the borders of the Forbidden 
Empire, and in point of fact she carries on some 
trade with the people of the district, who much 
prefer her dealings to those of the Chinese mer- 
chants and officials. But first of all, as both 
Chinese and Tibetans know, she is a missionary, 
partly to the bodies (for her mission is provided 
with a dispensary), but above all to the souls of 
her beloved Tibetans. *^The trading is not a 
hardship," she writes. **If Paul could make 
tents for Christ, surely we can do this for our 
Master. So those who are * called ' to work for 
Tibet must be prepared for the present to sell 
goods to the Tibetans or attend to their ailments, 
as well as preach the Gospel to them." Seldom 
surely in the annals of Christian missions has 
there been a more romantic figure than that of 
this heroine of Tibet, who nearly succeeded in 
reaching Lhasa, but having failed, turned, with 
a sanctified common sense which might almost 

134 



A Heroine of Tibet 

be described as apostolic, to the open door 
offered by the trading regulations of the Sikkim- 
Tibet Convention of 1893. 

The story of Miss Taylor's march upon Lhasa, together with some 
account of her pioneer mission in the Chumbi Valley, will be found in 
her book, Pioneering in Tibet (London : Morgan and Scott). 



'35 



"THE SAVIOUR OF LIAO-YANG" 



CHAPTER VI 
"THE SAVIOUR OF LIAO-YANG" 



A medical missionary's power — The Boxer madness — The avenging 
Russians — Looting of Hal-cheng — The ''Free Healing Hall" — 
In front of Llao-yang— "A fine thing done by a white man all 
alone" — "The Saviour of Liao-yang" — Russo-Japanese War — 
Battle of Liao-yang — A Mission hospital in the hour of battle — Mr. 
Bennet Burleigh's testimony — A robber's point of view — Adventure 
with bandits. 



IN an earlier chapter on the work of Dr. 
Chamberlain among the Telugus of south- 
eastern India, something was said about the 
romantic aspects of even the ordinary routine 
of medical missions. Whether in the wards of 
his hospital or itinerating among scattered vil- 
lages, the missionary doctor has an opportunity 
and an influence beyond any possessed by one 
who is only a preacher or teacher. 

Jesus Christ, it has been said, was the first 
medical missionary. As he went about Galilee 
doing good. He not only **preached the Gospel 

139 



'' The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

of the kingdom," but ** healed all manner of 
sickness and all manner of disease among the 
people." In this combination of healing with 
preaching lay a large part of the secret of 
our Lord^s attractive power. The modern 
missionary doctor cannot work miracles. But 
through the progress of medical science he has 
acquired a marvellous power to heal sickness 
and relieve suffering. And by the quiet exer- 
cise of his skill amongst a heathen and some- 
times hostile population, he inspires a confidence 
and calls forth a gratitude by which the solid 
walls of prejudice are rapidly broken down and 
locked doors are thrown wide open for the 
entrance of the Christian Gospel. 

It is the gracious work of healing, steadily 
carried on from year to year, that lays the foun- 
dations of a medical missionary's power. But 
sometimes in the history of a mission there 
come hours of crisis which bring with them the 
chance of doing something heroic, and in which 
a strong man's grandest qualities become re- 
vealed. It was in such an hour that Dr. A. 
Macdonald Westwater, a Scotch Presbyterian 
missionary, gained the name of *^The Saviour 

140 



'* The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

of Liao-yang, " by which he is now known all 
over Manchuria. 

The Boxer madness had swept up to Man- 
churia from the south, and had raged across 
the country with the swift destructiveness of a 
prairie fire. Hordes of Chinese soldiers joined 
the anti-foreign movement, and everywhere 
there was **red ruin and the breaking up of 
laws.'* Christian missions and native Christians 
suffered most, for they had to bear the full brunt 
of the savage hatred stirred up against the 
*^ foreign devils." But the rioters did not stop 
short with massacring Christians and destroying 
mission property. Boxerism soon turned to 
indiscriminate brigandage. And by and by the 
great city of Mukden, the capital of the three 
provinces of Manchuria, was looted, while for 
a distance of 500 miles the marauders marched 
along the railway line, tearing up the rails, 
destroying stations, plundering and burning 
houses and villas on either hand. 

But the avengers were soon on the trail. 
Russian troops were poured into Manchuria, 
and a terrible work of reprisal was begun. 
Advancing simultaneously from south and 

141 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

north, the Russians simply wiped out every 
village in which they found any railway 
material, and left the country behind them 
black and smoking on both sides of what had 
once been the railway line. 

The terror of their name travelled before 
them. As they drew near to Hai-cheng the 
people fled en masse^ though the better-off* 
among them, in the hope of securing some 
consideration for their property, took the pre- 
caution of leaving caretakers behind in their 
houses and shops. But the troops of the Czar 
treated Hai-cheng as they had already treated 
many a meaner place. Of the numerous care- 
takers left in the city only six escaped from 
the pitiless massacre that followed the military 
occupation. Hai-cheng itself was looted and 
left absolutely bare. And then the Russians 
moved onwards, still destroying as they went, 
and making their way now towards the impor- 
tant city of Liao-yang. 

In Liao-yang, previous to the Boxer out- 
break, a splendid work had been carried on 
for years by Dr. Westwater, an agent of the 
United Presbyterian, now the United Free 

142 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

Church of Scotland. His *^Free Healing 
Hall," as the name of his mission hospital ran 
in Chinese, had become a place of note in the 
city. In this hall, as one of the citizens, not 
himself a Christian, expressed it, **the blind 
saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard ; and all 
were counselled to virtue." 

Compelled by the Boxer fury to lay down 
his work in Liao-yang for a time, the doctor 
sought and obtained permission to accompany 
the Russian punitive field force as a member 
of the Russian Red Cross Society with General 
Alexandrovski at its head. He was present 
in every battle fought during the campaign, 
and immensely impressed the Russian officers 
by his surgical skill, which quite surpassed 
that of any doctor of their own. In this way 
he gained the good opinion and respect of the 
general in command, and was able to do some- 
thing towards checking the frightful excesses 
of which, at first, the army was guilty. 

When the advancing troops reached Liao- 
yang, a small engagement was fought in which 
the Chinese were defeated. Following up their 
victory, the Russians were just about to enter 

143 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

the suburbs, when they were fired upon from 
the city walls and so brought to a halt. Mean- 
while from the Korean Gate the inhabitants 
were pouring out in crowds, endeavouring to 
make good their escape before the Russians 
should take the city. Numbers of people were 
trampled to death in the panic-stricken rush, 
many were pushed into the river and drowned. 
To crown the horrors of the scene, the Russian 
gunners got on to this black mass of strug- 
gling fugitives, and began to throw shells into 
the thick of it. 

It now seemed certain that Liao-yang would 
share the fate that had already befallen Hai- 
cheng — the fate of being deserted by a terrified 
population and given up to massacre and loot 
at the hands of native brigands as well as of 
Russian troops. Only one man stood between 
it and destruction, but that man had the soul 
of a hero, and proved himself equal to the 
occasion. 

Before the general had ordered an assault 
upon the city, Dr. Westwater had obtained an 
interview with him. His words were brief but 
to the point. ^*I undertake," he said, ^*to 

144 



*' The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

enter Liao-yang by myself, and to persuade 
the people to surrender peacefully, but upon 
one condition." **What is that?" asked the 
general. **That I have your solemn word of 
honour that no harm shall be done to the 
person of man or woman within the walls, and 
that there shall be absolutely no looting." 

To a Russian commander this was a new 
way of dealing with an obstinate Chinese town. 
But Dr. Westwater's personality by this time 
had made a strong impression on him, and he 
at once gave his word of honour to observe 
the stipulated terms. The doctor then mounted 
his pony, and rode on all alone towards the 
walls of this lately Boxerised city. 

Obtaining entrance by one of the gates, and 
riding on through the streets, he could see no 
sign of any living creature. It looked at first 
as if the whole population had already vanished, 
though most of them, he afterwards found, had 
simply shut themselves up within their houses. 
At last a Christian schoolboy approached who 
had recognized him and come out to meet 
him. From this boy Dr. Westwater learned 
that at that very time the members of the 
K 145 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

Guild — the City Fathers of Liao-yang, as they 
might be called — were gathered together to 
take counsel regarding the city's fate. 

Riding on, he came to their hall of meeting, 
and introduced himself as one whom most of 
them knew as a Christian doctor, but who was 
now come as an ambassador of peace from the 
head of the Russian army. And when he 
went on to inform them that the general had 
passed his deliberate word of honour to himself 
to do no harm to the place if it was quietly 
surrendered, a thrill of astonishment and relief 
ran through the meeting. The word was 
quickly carried through the streets, and the 
confidence of the city was restored as if by 
magic. The people no longer thought of aban- 
doning Liao-yang to its fate, but prepared with 
perfect calmness to receive their conquerors. 

The Russian general, on the other hand, 
was absolutely loyal to his word. To secure 
that his promises should be observed to the 
letter he appointed, not sergeants merely, but 
commissioned officers to go about the streets 
with the patrols. And this was the altogether 
unexampled result. During the whole of the 

146 



'^ The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

Russian occupation of Liao-yang there was 
not a single instance of crime committed by 
the soldiery against the person or property of 
any inhabitant of the city. 

This gallant deed of the Scotch missionary 
doctor has been described by Mr. Whigham, 
the well-known Eastern traveller and war cor- 
respondent, as *^a fine thing done by a white 
man all alone," and as the bravest deed of 
which he knows. ^ And it was this that gained 
for Dr. Westwater from the people of Man- 
churia his enviable name of ^*The Saviour of 
Liao-yang." 

Upon the citizens of Liao-yang itself Dr. 
Westwater's action made a very deep impres- 
sion. They felt that to him they owed the 
salvation of their lives and homes. On his 
return to the city after the conclusion of his 
period of service with the Red Cross Society, 
the heads of the native guilds called on him to 
express their gratitude. They offered him the 
choice of a number of compounds for a tem- 
porary house and hospital, stating their readi- 
ness to pay all the expenses of alterations, 

^ See The Bravest Deed I Ever Saw (Hutchinson and Co.), p. 37. 

147 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

rent, and even of medicines. Finally, about 
a year after, when he went home to Scotland 
on furlough, the city honoured him with a 
triumphal procession. Banners waved, musical 
instruments brayed and banged. With native 
dignity and grandeur the gentry of the place 
accompanied the man whom they delighted to 
honour through the streets, out of the gate, 
and right up to the railway station, where they 
bade him their best farewell. 

As the result of what he had done, the 
doctor's name and fame spread far and wide 
through the provinces of Manchuria. Some 
time afterwards the Rev. Mr. MacNaughtan, 
going on a prolonged and distant missionary 
tour, found that right away to the banks of the 
Yalu River, some 200 miles from Liao-yang, 
Dr. Westwater's was a name to charm with. 
Immediately on hearing it mentioned the 
people would say, ** Oh, that was the man who 
saved Liao-yang." 

Hardly less deep was the effect produced by 
the doctor's character and action upon the 
Russians in Manchuria. His opinions had 
weight with the authorities, while he himself 

148 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

became a great personal favourite with all who 
knew him. Being a Scotchman, Muscovite 
demonstrativeness often caused him some em- 
barrassment, for a Russian admirer thought 
nothing of throwing his arms round him and 
bestowing a hearty kiss. Mr. Whigham tells 
how he met a Russian engineer, M. RestzofP, 
who, learning that Mr. Whigham was a Scotch- 
man, said he was glad to make the acquaint- 
ance of one who came from Scotland, for the 
two greatest men he knew of were both Scotch- 
men — Dr. Westwater and Sir Walter Scott ! 

Much water has flowed under the bridges of 
Manchuria — water often mingled with blood — 
since the days of the Boxer rising. But the 
events of more recent years have only added 
to Dr. Westwater's reputation, and proved 
once more how much can be done in the 
interests of humanity and Christianity, amid 
all ^*the tumult and the shouting" and the 
unbridled savagery of war, by a brave, strong 
man who has devoted his life to the service of 
his fellow-creatures as a medical missionary. 

When the tremendous struggle began be- 
tween Japan and Russia, Dr. Westwater and 

149 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

his colleague, Mr. MacNaughtan, together 
with their wives, were allowed to remain in 
Liao-yang. This in itself was a tribute to the 
Doctor's influence, for it is practically certain 
that but for him the Russians would have ex- 
pelled the missionaries from the province with 
the opening of the war. It was the entire con- 
fidence felt in him— sufficiently proved by his 
being in constant demand at headquarters to 
prescribe for the officers of the army — that 
enabled the mission to retain its hold upon the 
city right through the long period of stress 
and conflict. 

As General Kuropatkin had fixed his head- 
quarters at Liao-yang, every fresh disaster to 
the Russian forces sent an electric thrill 
through the whole region of which the city 
formed the centre. And as the opposing 
armies drew nearer and nearer, the Russians 
constantly retreating and the Japanese press- 
ing on, the surrounding population began to 
flock into Liao-yang by tens of thousands. 
At this stage the doctor obtained General 
Kuropatkin 's permission to open a refuge for 
these poor homeless creatures, and soon he had 

ISO 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang*' 

four thousand of them, all heathen, under his 
immediate care. 

Meanwhile the tide of battle rolled nearer 
and nearer. From Mr. MacNaughtan's lips 
we have received a vivid account of the scenes 
which were witnessed by Dr. Westwater and 
himself from the city walls during that long- 
drawn week of desperate and Titanic encounter 
which is known as the battle of Liao-yang. 
Everything lay before them as in a vast pano- 
rama — the great Manchurian plain rolling out 
its length towards the boundary of the distant 
low hills, the constant stream of ammunition 
and commissariat waggons flowing on steadily 
from the station to the battlefield, the sad 
stream of wounded men flowing as steadily 
back, the deadly shells bursting nearer and 
nearer until at length it became no longer 
possible to stand in safety on the city walls. 

Then, after the days of waiting and watching, 
followed the days of strenuous action. Men, 
women, and little children, horribly smashed 
up, began to be carried into the mission hos- 
pital, till not only the wards but all the sur- 
rounding sheds were crammed with patients. 

151 



'' The Saviour of Liao-yang'* 

Meanwhile the doctor had his crowded refuge 
to think of and provide for and be anxious 
about, for the shells were falling thick, and 
five times it was hit, though by a merciful 
providence on every occasion not a single soul 
within the walls was so much as scratched. 

In his Empire of the East Mr. Bennet 
Burleigh, the veteran doyen of military corres- 
pondents, describes Dr. Westwater as he found 
him in the thick of his work at this decisive 
moment of the war. ** Brave as a lion," he 
writes, *^ Dr. Westwater went about alone, 
regardless of shellfire and bullets, succouring 
the wounded and doing good." And then he 
goes on to tell in more detail what kind of 
good the doctor was doing in those awful days : 
how he sheltered the homeless, fed the starving, 
performed under all the strain of multiplied 
duties scores of critical operations, and yet 
found time to show pity and kindness to the 
crowds of terrified women and helpless children 
whom war had cast upon his hands. 

**I saw the doctor," he says, **just after he 
had completed seven amputations, and a score 
more of cases remained to be dealt with." It 

152 



'' The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

adds to the impressiveness of Mr. Bennet 
Burleigh's picture of a hero at the post of duty 
in a trying hour when he remarks: ** He had 
no assistant — his only helpers a few Chinese 
who served as nurses." We should supplement 
Mr. Burleigh's statement, however, by mention- 
ing that while Dr. Westwater was ministering 
to the heathen refugees, Mr. MacNaughtan, 
by previous arrangement with his colleague, 
was devoting himself to the service of the 
native Christians of Liao-yang in the hour of 
need. 

When the Japanese at length entered the 
city, they paid their tribute, like the Russians 
before them, to the value of Dr. Westwater's 
work. It was their fire, of course, that had 
wrought the havoc among the non-combatants, 
but this was an inevitable result of the fact 
that the Russians had made their last stand at 
the railway station, and no one more regretted 
the suffering caused to the people of Liao-yang 
than the victorious general. One of his first 
acts was to contribute looo yen to Dr. West- 
water's hospital and the same sum to his refuge, 
i.e. in English money, ;^ioo to each. 

153 



'' The Saviour of Liao-yang*' 

We have shown something of Dr. West- 
water's renown among Chinese citizens and 
English war correspondents, among the war- 
riors of Russia and Japan alike. It is half 
amusing to learn that he holds a reputation 
hardly less distinguished among the robbers 
and bandits of the Manchurian wilds. 

These outlaws, the pests of the country in 
troublous times, have a happy facility of be- 
coming armed marauders or peaceful villagers 
at will. The advantages of the doctor s ^^ Free 
Healing Hall " to a man with a broken limb or 
an unextracted bullet are not unknown to them, 
and now and then a robber wounded in some 
skirmish will find his way into the hospital at 
Liao-yang, representing himself as a poor 
peasant who has been attacked and wounded 
by cruel bandits. 

Some time ago a Christian colporteur from 
the city was travelling through the country 
districts with his pack of Bibles, Testaments, 
and tracts. He was passing along a road 
bordered by a field of ripe millet, when in 
a moment three or four robbers armed with 
revolvers sprang out from their hiding-place 

154 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'* 

behind the tall stalks. First of all they relieved 
him of the money made by his sales, then they 
opened his pack and looked curiously at his 
books. ** Who are you ? " one of them asked. 
^*I belong to the Bible Society," he said. 
*^What is that?" *^It is a society of Chris- 
tians," the man replied. **Ah! Christians!" 
they shouted, ^Hhe society of the foreign 
devils " ; and with that one of them pointed 
his revolver at the colporteur's head, fingering 
the trigger meanwhile in a way that was 
decidedly nasty. 

Just then another of the band suddenly 
stepped foward and asked, '^ Do you know Dr. 
Westwater?" ^*I know him well," the man 
answered; ^^he is a member of the Church 
to which I belong." On hearing this the 
robber turned to his companions and said, 
** Do not touch this fellow. Dr. Westwater is 
a good man. Two years ago he took a bullet 
out of my ribs." Whereupon this robber band 
handed back to the colporteur not only his 
pack, but every copper of his money, and bade 
him go in peace on his way to Liao-yang. 

Another experience of a somewhat similar 

155 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

kind befell the doctor's colleague, the Rev. 
Mr. MacNaughtan himself. About a fortnight 
before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese 
War, Mr. MacNaughtan, who had been 
itinerating in the province, was riding back 
to Liao-yang. He was drawing near to a 
strange village, and there was nothing on the 
road in front of him but a Chinese cart rum- 
bling slowly along. All at once there shot out 
from the village in a fan-shaped skirmishing 
formation a band of about twenty horsemen, 
all armed with rifles. Some of them galloped 
furiously to right and left, so as to cut off any 
possibility of escape, but five came straight 
down the road towards the carter and the 
missionary. 

They met the carter first. One of them, 
who was mounted on a tall Russian horse, 
taken no doubt from a murdered Russian 
soldier, drew up his steed across the road, 
compelling the cart to stop, and then drawing 
a heavy whip, began to lash the unfortunate 
peasant from head to heel. 

Mr. MacNaughtan's heart beat fast, for he 
knew that at that very time Russian outposts 

156 



''The Saviour of Liao-yang'' 

were being nipped off every now and then by 
bands of desperate bandits. He did not know 
what might be about to befall him. But he 
thought it best, trusting in God, to put a brave 
face on the matter and ride straight on. 

When he reached the cart the five robbers 
were drawn up beside it on the road. One of 
them held his rifle across his saddle ready for 
use, and all of them looked at him keenly. 
That he was a European they saw at once, 
but the Chinese sheepskin robe he wore showed 
that he was not a Russian, but a missionary. 
** Where are you going?" they demanded. 
**To Liao-yang," he replied. ^*Then pass 
on," they said. And without the slightest 
attempt on the part of any one of them to 
deprive him of his money or to molest him in 
any way, he was allowed to continue on his 
journey. 

Talking to the present writer of this incident, 
Mr. MacNaughtan said that he had no doubt 
whatever that, though not himself a doctor, he 
owed his escape to the influence of the Liao- 
yang medical mission. Even to the savage 
bandits of Manchuria Dr. Westwater is **a 

157 



'* The Saviour of Liao-yang" 

good man." Some of them, as has been said, 
have passed through his hands, and are grate- 
ful to him accordingly. Others have heard of 
his skill and generosity, and if on no higher 
grounds, entertain a kindly feeling towards 
him at least from the lower but still effective 
motive of that form of gratitude which has 
been defined as *^a lively sense of favours to 
come." 



The materials for the above chapter have been derived partly 
from the pages of the Missionary Record of the United Free Church 
of Scotland, but chiefly from the personal narrative of the Rev. W. 
MacNaughtan, m.a., of the Presbyterian Mission in Liao-yang. 



WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. 
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH 



;b is m^ 



5i/30** 



